My postdoctoral research focuses on understory fern communities, and their success following disaster and disturbance events. Ferns have been recorded via spores within the geologic record following mass extinction events and after modern events such as volcanic eruptions, with few hypotheses as to why ferns are so successful within these habitats. The mechanistic drivers behind this relationship has been viewed through a competition or antagonistic lens of ecology, focusing on how communities out preform others. However, it is more likely that fern communities act as facilitators of community assemblage with positive plant-plant interactions.
These dynamic relationships are not stagnant, responding as the forest landscape changes. As such, fern facilitation likely drives to the eventual extirpation or restriction of ferns within the landscape they facilitated the restoration of.
These dynamic relationships are not stagnant, responding as the forest landscape changes. As such, fern facilitation likely drives to the eventual extirpation or restriction of ferns within the landscape they facilitated the restoration of.