Delicia Pino Garay

Master of Science in Tropical and International Forestry, Göttingen.

My research focuses on understanding the importance of nutrients and drought for shaping patterns of species distributions in tropical forests. I carry out common garden fertilization experiments in the forest in Panama to quantify species responses to nutrients. I will link the results to quantitative assessments of species’ distribution patterns across rainfall and nutrient gradients. Disentangling the effects of nutrients and drought is essential to understand the mechanisms driving diversity and composition of tropical forests as well as possible effects of changing climate. This research is carried out at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.