My study sites

Barro Colorado Island , Panama

Barro Colorado Island (BCI) is a former hilltop that got isolated from the mainland with the formation of an artificial lake as part of the Panama Canal . BCI is the best-studied tropical forest in the world. The BCI fauna is abundant thanks to strong protection. For a postdoc project, we studied effects of mammals on seed fate and seedling recruitment, using forests with similar vegetation but different population levels of mammals, on BCI and the adjacent mainland, where the fauna is subject to heavy poaching.

Veluwe, the Netherlands

The Veluwe is the largest natural area in North-Western Europe. It is a mosaic of forest, heath land, and drifting sand. The area is totally fragmented by roads and fences, and heavily used for other purposes than nature. Yet, the species-poor forests are a great model system to work with, and it is adjacent to Wageningen, my home town.

Our focal species here are European oak (Quercus robur), Wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), Wild boar (Sus scrofa), and seed-predating weevils. With Jan den Ouden ( Wageningen University ), I study how seed mass and mast seeding affect seed dispersal and predation, and how boar, mice, and weevils interact.

Nouragues, French Guiana

This fabulous site in the Nouragues reserve is located 100 km inland from Cayenne . The station can be reached only by helicopter or by a long car-boat-hiking trip. I first visited Nouragues in 1991 for my MSc. I came back in 1995-2000, and did most fieldwork for my PhD here. The forest here is absolutely beautiful and the fauna was completely intact. Unfortunately, the reserve has recently been invaded by illegal goldminers, mostly from neighboring Brazil , and the future of the station and its long-term experiments have become uncertain.