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Landscape and Community Ecology |
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Much of my immediate research seeks to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of forest-endemic insect communities in the fragmented forests of Ghana. I redirected my research efforts to this region of the world because of a desire to contribute to global efforts
to mitigate biodiversity loss and address socioeconomic agents of environmental degradation and of a belief that balance between consumption and conservation of biological resources is an achievable objective. |
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My efforts are centered on sacred forest groves, which are ancient forms of conservation. These long-protected indigenous reserves were once embedded within dense forest cover, but now exist as "forest islands"
in an agropastoral "sea". The country's unique network of isolated forest reserves and sacred groves presents rare opportunity to explore, in situ, how natural forest communities have changed as the landscape matrix surrounding them was
transformed from one of forest habitat to one where forest habitat is virtually nonexistent. Patterns of species abundance, richness, and endemism, and species-area relationships that are emerging from my surveys are being used to test fundamental
hypotheses in ecology, evolution, and biogeography; for example, are these island communities random or non random draws from the species source pool and why, and which landscape attributes determine historical and current species distributions and abundances.
Theory suggests that species composition across remnant patches is predictable given that key parameters such as patch size, distance from source population, extent of edge perimeter, and nature of the landscape matrix, can be determined and measured.
But we still know almost nothing about how fragmentation changes community composition, which habitats support the highest diversity of endemic species, and what features characterize these habitats. Species dynamics in remnant habitat islands may be more
idiosyncratic than predictable, for example, if past history and local catastrophe or opportunity largely determine taxa present in a given habitat patch. |
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At a practical level, my main goals are to chip away at the huge information deficient that currently exists for Afrotropical ecosystems, to compile spatial and temporal abundance and distribution data for directing science-based
conservation activities, to solidify a permanent repository of biotic resources in the country, and to facilitate collaboration, mentoring, and training between students and professionals from the U.S. and Ghana. |
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