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Gerardo Avalos holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in plant physiological ecology and conservation from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. After obtaining his B.Sc. in Biology at the University of Costa Rica, Gerardo began his graduate studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and then he transferred to the University of Missouri – St. Louis, where he investigated the physiological ecology of lianas and using a construction crane to reach the canopy working with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. His dissertation examined the light acclimation of tropical lianas to temporal and spatial changes in light availability at the surface the forest canopy. His current research interests include the biomechanics of tropical palms, the impact of illegal extraction on the population biology of palms, the effects of habitat fragmentation on species conservation of local and migratory birds, the functional ecology of hummingbirds, and the dynamics of carbon sequestration. After serving for 6 years as the Center for Sustainable Development Studies resident ecologist, Gerardo became the Center Director in 2007. He is aslo associated with the University of Costa Rica where he teaches Botany, Natural History, and Multivariate Statistics.
I am interested in the physiological adaptations of tropical plants to spatial and temporal changes in the availability of light, especially the characters that are responsible for the expression of plasticity at the extremes of the light gradient in a tropical forest: the understory and the canopy. In my PhD dissertation I explored the physiological ecology of canopy lianas and their adaptation to light gradients working 50 m above the ground form the top of a construction crane located in a jungle in Panama. Currently, I am doing research on the biomechanics of tropical palms to understand the limits to height increases and the strategies of leaf display in plants that only have primary growth.
These interests led to research projects looking at the dynamics of the extraction of non-timber forest products coming from palms, such as heart of palm. I have explored the ecological consequences of palm extraction, as well as the social and cultural interface determining extraction preferences. I also have studied the effects of fragmentation of roads on neotropical birds, especially understory insectivores, implementing plant ecology techniques (hemispherical photographs) to describe habitat structure and to predict habitat quality for many understory insectivore species. Finally, I have studied the temporal cycles of tropical aquatic macroinvertebrates and their utility as biological indicators. In all these research areas I apply the latest multivariate statistics techniques to understand the interactions among multiple variables across space and time.
Outputs:
Manuscripts in the works looking at changes across space and time over 8 years, and at the use of hierarchical diversity at the Order and Family level to track changes in the structure of macroinvertebrate bioindicators.
Outputs:
Manuscripts are the works looking at shade tolerance in Euterpe precatoriaand Geonoma edulis.
Keynote speaker to the International Palm Society meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, May 2008.