The vast majority of studies of tropical forests have focused only on trees and other life forms have been unjustifiably ignored. Bamboo is one group of plant species that has the potential to significantly affect large-scale forest dynamics in the Andes-Amazon region; however, it has been overlooked in most forest studies to date.
Bamboos are native species in this region and dominate vast areas of forest, for example, the Bamboo-Dominated Forest in Southern Amazon extends over 160,000 km2 – an area equivalent in size to the state of Florida. Bamboos are strong competitors in forest ecosystems; they are able to dominate both forest canopies and understories.
My research on bamboos takes place across a range of critical tropical habitats, from the lowland Amazonian jungles to the highland Andean cloud forests in Manu National Park, Peru. I use a range of approaches to investigate the interactions between climate and bamboo, and the potential effects of bamboo on forest. More specifically, I am using a combination of plot-based data, functional trait data and remote sensing techniques to understand the role of bamboo in determining forest structure, composition and physiology and how climatic tolerances controls bamboo species distribution. Here you can see a Rapid Field Guide showing some of the species that we found in the study area: https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/guides/guide/1454