This month, Vitor de Andrade Kamimura and Helena Streit have joined our group from Brazil for a postdoctoral stay of nearly one year.
During his visit to Francesco de Bello’s group, supported by a BEPE/FAPESP fellowship, Vitor is investigating how functional traits shape forest responses to environmental gradients and extreme events—from individuals to entire communities—using 15 years of monitoring data on over 25,000 trees in the Atlantic Forest. By tracking trait-mediated interactions, he explores how environmental context influences diversity, productivity, and resilience following an extreme drought event. In a complementary project, he is comparing different methods for measuring functional trait dissimilarity to improve our understanding of ecological differences among species and to guide the selection of appropriate indices for functional ecology research. Together, these studies aim to clarify how trait diversity supports ecosystem stability under global change.
Meanwhile, Helena’s project examines whether plant invasions alter the phylogenetic structure of native communities. Her research focuses on native grasslands in southern Brazil, investigating how biological invasions may reshape the evolutionary relationships among co-occurring species. Her work is supported by a CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil) fellowship.
We are delighted to have Vitor and Helena with us and look forward to an inspiring year of collaboration and research!