My research concerns the population and community ecology of tropical forests, with a particular interest in understanding how soil nutrient availability and soil microbial communities shape the composition and diversity of tree communities. Current projects explore (i) seed-infecting fungi as a model system for understanding how plant-pathogen interactions and plant defense traits influence abundance and coexistence; (ii) role of soil nutrient availability in structuring tree communities and plant functional traits; (iii) role of wood nutrients as a plant nutrient store in nutrient-poor soil and as a determinant of wood decomposer community composition and decay rate.