Scaling Down to Scale Up: The Role of Micro in Biogeography
Complex forest vegetation creates steep vertical gradients in climate, habitat, and resources that rival or exceed those found across elevation and latitude. These microgeographic gradients offer a powerful model to understand how abiotic and biotic interactions structure communities. In this seminar, I will explore how micro-scale variation in climate and habitat interacts with species’ morphology, physiology, and behavior to shape larger biogeographic patterns, with special attention to their role in mediating responses to global change.
About our speaker: Brett is an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and Co-Director of the Florida Climate Institute at the University of Florida. His research examines how biodiversity responds to global change across scales—from the microclimates created by forest canopies and leaf litter to continental gradients of latitude and elevation. He combines fieldwork, experiments, and global syntheses to reveal how fine-scale ecological processes shape macroecological and biogeographic patterns. Before returning to the United States to join the University of Florida, Brett completed a postdoctoral fellowship at James Cook University in Australia, a PhD at the National University of Singapore, an MSc at the University of Alberta in Canada, and a BSc at Sewanee: The University of the South.
