Last week our dear Melissa successfully defended her MSc thesis. Melissa’s work pioneered a series of studies at the landscape scale in our lab investigating habitat fragmentation and land use change’s effects on community composition and ecosystem function. Her study on tropical forests documented differences in invertebrate diversity across habitat types, including both species gains and losses due to land conversion and habitat fragmentation, and showed that these two processes had divergent effects on litter decomposition. Her results emphasize the need for large forest reserves to prevent considerable losses of continuous forest fauna.
Our lab proudly celebrates the occasion.
Congratulations to Melissa!