Dr. Stephen Hubbell wins prestigious International Prize for Biology

CTFS-ForestGEO co-founder Stephen P. Hubbell will receive this year’s International Prize for Biology, awarded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The committee on the International Prize, chaired by Dr. Takashi Sugimura, announced its selection earlier last week for the specialized field of “Biology of Biodiversity”. The International Prize for Biology is one of the highest scientific honors given by Japan. The prize is granted to Dr. Hubbell for his exceptional contributions to biological and ecological research.

Dr. Hubbell’s long and remarkable career covers a wide-range of research topics including tropical plant ecology, resource competition, animal behavior, and theoretical ecology. He has authored four books and more than 220 scientific papers. He is perhaps most widely known for his unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography that offers a nontraditional explanation for the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities. The theory has spawned a significant growth in research in theoretical ecology.

Currently Dr. Hubbell is a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Life Sciences Division at University of California, Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advance­ment of Science. He is also founding chairman of the National Council for Science and the Environment, an organization whose mission is to improve the scientific basis of environmental decision-making.

In 1980 Dr. Hubbell helped establish the Barro Colorado Island forest plot in Panama, the first of CTFS-ForestGEO’s sites.

CTFS-SIGEO Celebrates 20 Years of Service from Suzanne Lao

Suzanne Lao, CTFS-SIGEO data manager, began her career at the Smithsonian in Panama as a statistician for the Galeta Oil Spill Project in Naos, and then quickly shifted to CTFS, where she has stayed for almost two decades. Managing the data from the BCI 50 hectare plot has been Suzanne's main responsibility during her many years with CTFS. She recently mentioned that the high quality of the BCI data has also benefited from the great working relationship that she has with colleagues Rolando Pérez and Salomón Aguilar. Suzanne has taken experiences learned from BCI data management and used them to help other sites manage their data. Suzanne has also played a key role in training workshops for the network. Most recently, she has worked to migrate plot data into a modern web-accessible database system, helping transform the way CTFS partners manage and use their data.

Suzanne recently said that the best part of working for CTFS-SIGEO has been getting to know collaborators from different sites, first via email, and then through workshops. She calls the CTFS-SIGEO network a "family," despite differences in language, culture, and scientific approaches. Suzanne is proud of all she has achieved during her years with STRI, and is grateful for her colleagues, particularly Rick Condit, who supports her in learning new database and analytical tools. She looks forward to meeting new people and continuing to advance her knowledge as STRI and CTFS-SIGEO grow and change. The entire CTFS-SIGEO community thanks Suzanne for her commitment, expertise, and dedication to the global network.

CTFS-SIGEO Forest Dynamics Symposium Talks Released

Symposium participants at STRI, Panama.

On February 22nd, 2011, CTFS-SIGEO hosted a forest research symposium at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. The symposium talks focused on new research directions being addressed by the CTFS network in both tropical and temperate forests. Talks were diverse, spanning mathematical modeling of diversity, life history of trees, DNA bar-coding, herbivory, vertebrates, disease ecology, and land use change projections. The symposium was held in the Tupper auditorium at STRI and was broadcast live on the web. Video recordings of the talks are now available at http://www.stri.si.edu/english/webcast/recent_webcasts.php.

New Book from the CTFS-SIGEO Network

We are pleased to announce the publication of Trees of Panama and Costa Rica by Richard Condit, Rolando Pérez and Nefertaris Daguerre. Richard Condit is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. Rolando Pérez is chief botanist and Nefertaris Daguerre is a forest specialist with the Center for Tropical Forest Science at the STRI.

L-to-R: Richard Condit, Rolando Pérez , and Nefertaris Daguerre.

This is the first field guide dedicated to the diverse tree species of Panama and Costa Rica. Covering almost 500 tropical tree species, Trees of Panama and Costa Rica includes 438 high-resolution color photos, 480 color distribution maps, and concise descriptions of key characteristics for every species. Family and species accounts are treated alphabetically and describe family size, number of genera and species, floral characteristics, and relative abundance. Color distribution maps supplement the species descriptions, and facing-page photographic plates detail bark, leaf, flower, or fruit of the species featured. Helpful appendices contain a full glossary, a comprehensive guide to leaf forms, and a list of families not covered.

Trees of Panama and Costa Rica is published by Princeton University Press and can be purchased here: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9289.html or at Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/Trees-Panama-Costa-Princeton-Guides/dp/0691147108

Seven Censuses over 30 years on BCI

Three decades after Stephen Hubbell and Robin Foster established the first plot in what would become the CTFS-SIGEO network, researchers and field technicians recently completed the seventh census of the 50-ha plot on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. The 1980 census on BCI marked the beginning of CTFS-SIGEO, pioneering the use of long-term large-scale tree-censusing techniques that researchers have replicated in forests across the globe. Today, CTFS-SIGEO comprises a network of 40 plots in 21 countries in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. The network involves hundreds of scientists and dozens of institutions around the world working together to study the growth and survival of 4.5 million trees of 8,500 species.

The following figures based on seven censuses (1980-2010) at BCI illustrate the extraordinary scale and intensity of CTFS-SIGEO’s research program.

1,836,533 diameter measurements of stems ≥1 cm

391,278 individual trees counted

174,435 tree deaths

155,955 trees recruited

17,500 person-days of fieldwork

85 person-years of fieldwork

130 people involved in the 7 censuses

This enormous undertaking could not have been possible without the hard work of the many people who have worked at BCI over the past 30 years. Congratulations to all involved!