No.200 Seminar ： “Resolving the biodiversity paradox in forest tree communities”
- Associate Professor Komei KADOWAKI (Hakubi 11th, Graduate School of Agriculture)
- 2021/07/06 4:30pm
- Zoom (Closed)
- English
Summary
Life on Earth is amazingly bio-diverse, but how do so many species arise, how are they maintained, and what happens if they were lost? Within a few decades ecologists have made enormous strides in understanding the distribution and abundance of species in ecological communities, and the complexity of the mechanisms behind the emergence, maintenance and loss of biodiversity. My research program has an emphasis on uncovering how species in natural forest ecosystems interact with one another to shape macroscopic features such as coexistence or succession. In this talk I will first show how we can use field experiments to study complex species interactions and their consequences for coexistence and succession in forest tree communities. I present evidence that soil microbes and leaf-eating insects may play key roles in determining an early stage of tree community assembly. In the second part, I will show some results of the analysis of tree community dynamics using the long-term census data of adult trees, seedlings, and seed traps in a 6-ha permanent plot in the Ashiu Research Forest of Kyoto University. Through modeling I examine the potential importance of multiple coexistence mechanisms in explaining the long-term tree community dynamics. Altogether, I conclude that we can achieve a better understanding of the drivers of forest tree diversity through a combination of field experiment, long-term monitoring and modeling.