Publications by authors named "D Mohandass"
Closed-canopy forests are being rapidly fragmented across much of the tropical world. Determining the impacts of fragmentation on ecological processes enables better forest management and improves species-conservation outcomes. Lianas are an integral part of tropical forests but can have detrimental and potentially complex interactions with their host trees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Understanding the biogeographic affinities of tropical forests helps explain regional differences in their structure, diversity, and responses to global changes.
- The study classifies the world's tropical forests into five main floristic regions based on their phylogenetic relationships: Indo-Pacific, Subtropical, African, American, and Dry forests.
- Findings challenge the traditional division of tropical forests and suggest a connection between northern-hemisphere Subtropical forests in Asia and America, as well as the existence of a global dry forest region.
Nectar-robbing has the potential to strongly affect male and female reproductive fitness of plants. One example of nectar theft is that shown by striped-squirrels (Tamiops swinhoei) on a number of ginger species, including Alpinia roxburghii and A. kwangsiensis (Zingiberaceae).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn estimate of the number of tropical tree species.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
June 2015
The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher's alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between ∼ 40,000 and ∼ 53,000, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF