Our research group is part of the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, a research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

In the Community Ecology and Conservation  Group, our core research focuses on species community composition and functional diversity across environmental gradients. We also research how communities and populations are evolving subject to land-use change and climate change, in order to understand their implications for the conservation of plant communities and species. We do this with the help of community diversity analyses,  remote sensing (GIS), molecular techniques and experimental methods.  

Most of our research is centred on tropical Asia, one of the fastest developing and changing tropical regions in the world. Its once continuous tropical forests are now fragmented and mostly degraded.  These changes have put enormous pressures on tropical Asia’s natural ecosystems.  Our groups aim is to study these changes and try to find ways to maintain or restore the functions of tropical Asia’s natural ecosystems. 

We also contribute to basic research through the study of functional trait diversity across environmental gradients at the global scale. These analyses contribute to general understanding of trait selection under resource limitation and herbivory. 

Forest destruction in Xishuangbanna, China  

Spinescent Pyracantha spp growing in northwestern Yunnan Province, China