Mar. 10, 2023
We have organized a five-day workshop at AMAP in Montpellier on 6-10 March, 2023 for the METRADICA project. We had 12 participants in total along the week. We advanced the work on the different tasks of the project and discussed the first results obtained by Marion, Jeanne, and Salman since the beginning of their PhD and postdoc within the project.

Mar. 9, 2023
The first article of Camille’s PhD has been accepted for publication in Ecology and Evolution. Congratulations Camille! I think this article is important to understand better the nature of intraspecific variability and improve our understanding of the coexistence of a large number of species competing for the same resources (the “biodiversity paradox”) in hyper-diverse communities, such as tropical forests. In the article, we show that a large part of the intraspecific variability observed in trees can be associated with an incomplete characterization of the environment. We show that the large intraspecific variability observed in data does not imply species niche overlap and that individuals of the same species have more similar performances than individuals from different species in a given environment. These results have important implications for elucidating the biodiversity paradox. Community models achieving coexistence of a large number of species commonly rely on low-dimensional perfect trade-offs or neutral processes, which does not correspond to our naturalistic knowledge of species and habitats. We thus defend the idea of a multidimensional niche à la Hutchinson to explain species coexistence. Each species is different and outperforms the others in a given environment, which varies in space and time in a high number of dimensions, thus allowing the coexistence of a large number of species.

Girard-Tercieux C., I. Maréchaux, A. T. Clark, J. S. Clark, B. Courbaud, C. Fortunel, J. Guillemot, G. Kunstler, G. le Maire, R. Pélissier, N. Rüger, and G. Vieilledent. 2023. Rethinking the nature of intraspecific variability and its consequences on species coexistence. Ecology and Evolution. 13 (3): e9860. doi:10.1002/ece3.9860. bioRxiv: 484259. , Supplementary materials

Feb. 20, 2023
Cirad has produced a short video to present some of my work on tropical forests. This video is part of a series of portraits of people working at Cirad to illustrate the diversity of people and professions at the institute.

Feb. 11, 2023
Version 1.2 of the riskmapjnr Python package has been released. The package allows obtaining maps of the deforestation risk for any jurisdiction following the methodology defined in the first version of the JNR Risk Mapping Tool.

Feb. 8, 2023
Our article about the vulnerability of Madagascar’s baobabs to climate change has been cited in a story on the National Geographic website.

Dec. 16, 2022
Congratulations to Camille who has brilliantly defended her PhD thesis at the University of Montpellier. Thanks to Aude Valade, Sean McMahon, and Björn Reineking for having accepted to be part of the jury.

Oct. 11, 2022 – Nov. 28, 2022
Mission to New-Caledonia for the end of the RELIQUES project funded by CNRT. The mission included some field work with the remeasurement of a 1-ha forest plot in the South of the island.

Sep. 19-23, 2022
INTRACO workshop at Cesab in Montpellier. We spent the week analysing forest inventory data from boreal, temperate, and tropical regions.