Lara A. Souza

I am a plant ecologist who is broadly interested in the role of global change, such as biological invasions and climatic change, in shaping the structure of plant communities and associated ecosystem processes. More specifically, I investigate the role of resource and climatic gradients, and the interplay of such factors, in structuring diversity across and within species in natural plant communities across spatial and temporal scales. Further, I quantify how diversity, both within and across species, mediates ecosystem properties such as productivity and net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange in the context of global change. We work in temperate prairies, tropical savannahs and montane meadows in order to tackle our research questions.

Research Areas: Plant ecology, Community and Ecosystem Ecology, Biological Invasions, Climate Change