Where did you go for your fellowship?
I spent my summer in southern Bahia, Brazil, working in a remnant patch of coastal tropical Atlantic Forest. I stayed in a town called Serra Grande, which was about a 15-minute drive from my study site and roughly an hour and a half north of the Universidade Federal do Sul da Bahia (UFSB)-Comissão Executiva do Plano da Lavoura Cacaueira (CEPLAC) campus where my research collaborators were based.
Why did you choose this location?
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work in Serra Grande through my advisor, Dr. Mark Ashton, and his collaborator and former PhD student, Dr. Daniel Piotto. Dr. Piotto has several ongoing research projects in the region, and I was particularly drawn to this site because it's one of the few long-term monitoring plots located in intact primary forest in southern Bahia, with data on forest community composition dating back to 1992.
What problem were you investigating?
I'm interested in understanding how tree communities in the few remaining intact Atlantic Forest fragments are changing over time. More specifically, I'm quantifying changes in demographic rates and taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity, and trying to assess how these changes might be related to climate change and habitat fragmentation.
Why does this question matter to you, and to the people you work with?
Large, intact patches of southern Bahian coastal forests are critical reservoirs for endemic species and late-successional specialists. Understanding how these communities have changed over time can help us identify which species are most at risk under future conditions. Quantifying changes across multiple dimensions of diversity (taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional) can provide a more comprehensive picture of how communities are being affected. For example, even if species richness remains stable, shifts in phylogenetic diversity could indicate that we're losing evolutionarily distinct lineages, while changes in functional diversity could signal shifts in how forests function and their resilience to climate change and disturbance.
Additionally, most of what we know about long-term tropical forest dynamics comes from studies taking place in the Amazon. The Atlantic Forest has a fundamentally different evolutionary history, climate regime, and fragmentation context, and therefore patterns observed in Amazonia and other tropical contexts cannot be assumed hold true in these communities.
What are the critical challenges facing your research site and the communities that are involved?
Southern Bahia is recognized as one of five main centers of endemism within the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot. However, only an estimated 3.1% of south Bahian coastal forests remain, with just 0.4% considered “intact” in patches larger than 400 hectares. Habitat loss, fragmentation, and resulting edge effects have been found to reduce late-successional and endemic species in Atlantic Forest communities, driving forests toward earlier-successional states and impacting their function and resilience.
Fragmentation also limits seed dispersal, reduces gene flow between populations, and constrains species' ability to migrate in response to changing climate conditions. Regional temperature increases and shifting precipitation patterns are expected to accelerate species turnover and reduce the distribution areas of most species. This is particularly concerning in southern Bahia because most tree species are affiliated with warm, moist conditions and already occur at high densities near their distribution limits. With limited suitable habitat to migrate to and fragmented landscapes constraining movement, many species in the region may be at risk under future conditions.
While restoration efforts are ongoing in the region and will hopefully reduce the effects of fragmentation if successful, it's essential to balance conservation priorities with economic needs. The region has a long history of land use for agriculture and cacao production, and many people's livelihoods depend on these activities. Successfully restoring these forests will require approaches that support both biodiversity and local communities.
Why do you love it?
Being able to actually experience the forest in all its different contexts offers an understanding of the ecosystem that can't be captured in rows and columns on a spreadsheet. Seeing a list of 500 tree species in Excel isn't nearly as impactful as standing in the forest itself and knowing the immense diversity that surrounds you.
I'm fascinated by the complex interactions and drivers that shape communities and allow biodiversity to persist, and how we might describe these to better predict successional pathways and future community composition. After spending the semester reviewing studies, theories, and conceptual frameworks attempting to describe community assembly mechanisms, it's grounding to return to the field, be surrounded by densely-packed trees and understory vegetation, and question how we ever began to impose any sort of order on it all. Yet after spending a few months getting to know the plot, measuring every tree and mapping their spatial patterns, we were able to point out differences in the forest community within the plot, even though we weren't always able to articulate what was driving the variation we observed. Whether these patterns are a product of deterministic, complex, chaotic, or stochastic relationships can be difficult to determine, but having the opportunity to observe them in the field helps me think more deeply about what unmeasured factors might be influencing community patterns and serves as an important reality check on predictive ecology.
Most importantly, I'm grateful for the opportunity the field season offers to listen to others' interpretations and experiences, understand why they're interested in what they do, and think more deeply about why I believe this work matters. I feel lucky to have worked alongside local experts and practitioners not just for the wealth of knowledge they had to offer, but also for their willingness to share their perspectives on the broader social and political factors impacting the forests and the research taking place within them.
What do you think is needed to understand or improve the situation?
Although research gaps still exist, I think one of the most pressing issues is finding better ways to integrate research and place-based knowledge into practice. The knowledge-practice gap has long been acknowledged, but I think we need to place greater emphasis on identifying and addressing the factors that restrict knowledge transfer, developing tools and resources that are accessible to a wide range of interested and affected parties, and finding ways to provide adequate funding to nurseries and seed collection efforts to support improved restoration and conservation management.
However, conservation and restoration cannot be successful without addressing the underlying drivers of deforestation. Research alone won't be enough if we don't address the social and economic factors that lead to forest loss, but it could help inform policy and guide meaningful engagement with stakeholders if made accessible to diverse audiences.
What challenges did you experience in your research?
While I was admittedly nervous leading up to the summer because of the planning and logistics required for international fieldwork, I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly things went. The most significant challenge was that I don't know how to drive a manual transmission (though I'm now planning to learn), which meant I had to fly into an airport seven hours south of my field site instead of one just an hour away to get an affordable automatic rental car. Beyond that, the support I received from my in-country collaborators and field technicians helped minimize the barriers that would have otherwise made the research extremely difficult.
Despite Portuguese being a new language for me, the patience of the field crew, their willingness to provide feedback, and their commitment to teaching me important vocabulary (like escorregadia (slippery) and formigas (ants) helped me pick up the language more quickly and improve our communication over the first few weeks. The number of species within the plot, many of which are rare endemics, made species identification extremely difficult and would have been impossible without the expertise of local botanists, who have been very generous with their time and knowledge. Collecting voucher specimens was only possible with the help of a member of our field crew who is skilled in tree climbing and canopy access.
How do you think your research may be used?
In the context of restoration, I hope my research can contribute to our understanding of the relationships between observed changes in community composition and their drivers, which could inform site-specific management interventions and species selection. If we can identify which species traits make trees vulnerable or resilient, and whether climate or fragmentation is the stronger driver of change, we might be able to make more informed decisions about which species to prioritize in restoration plantings, where to focus conservation efforts, and how to design landscape-scale interventions that support forest resilience.
Is there anything else you want to tell us?
I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the understanding of Atlantic Forest ecology, though I recognize my work is just a small piece of a much larger research and conservation effort. The TRI Fellowship helped make this research possible, and I'm especially thankful to my collaborators in Brazil—including Daniel Piotto, Renata dos Santos Rocha, Jucelino Oliveira Santos, Jomar Jardim, Antonio Marcos, as well as YSE alum and current Fulbright Fellow Jessica Jones—who shared their knowledge and made this work feasible. My hope is that this research can support their ongoing efforts in some meaningful way.