Description:
An important question in contemporary plant ecology is how naturally occurring plant communities are structured. Interactions between plants and their environment, as well as those between individual plants, are often intricate and unfold over extended periods, making them challenging to detect without long-term monitoring. In this presentation, I will share findings on the local-scale (< 1 km2) structure of some tropical dry forest and savanna plant communities. Climate and fire seem especially important, with topography and soil also playing a role. Recent work suggests a plant’s performance is additionally influenced by how phylogenetically-related and functionally-similar a plant is to its neighbours.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Sandeep Pulla is the Science Manager for the Long-Term Ecological Observatories (LTEO) program of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). He completed his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India and his postdoctorate from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, India. He is a plant ecologist as well as a computer scientist, and combines methods from the field and statistical analysis in his work.