Tree Diversity in the Amazon Forest
The Amazon harbors one of the richest ecosystems on Earth. Such diversity is partially due to plant specialization, associated with the occurrence of a mosaic of forest (i.e. flooded and terra firme forests). In 2009 I established three 1-ha permanent plots in three different forest types in the Colombian Amazon to assess the importance of habitat specialization in driving compositional and phylogenetic variation across the Amazonian forest. These three plots are now part of the Amazon Tree Diversity Network (ATDN). Since then, the team has published great papers that have fostered understanding of the processes that maintain and originate the incredible diversity of these forests.
In 2018, we published a book chapter comparing the diversity of dispersal systems across forest types including terra firme and flooded landscapes.
Check out our recent publications!
Householder J.E., … Umaña M.N., … et al. 2024. One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains. Nature Ecology and Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02364-1.
Luize B. G., … Umaña M.N., … et al. 2024. Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities. Journal of Biogeography https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14816.
Contact
María Natalia Umaña
Assistant Professor
Ecology and EVolutionary Biology
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
3142 Biological Sciences Building