Anais-Pasiphaé Gorel

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Liège

Climatic niche evolution during the diversification of tropical plants has received little attention in Africa. To address this, we characterised the climatic niche of >4000 tropical African woody species, distinguishing two broad bioclimatic groups (forest vs. savanna) and six subgroups. We quantified niche conservatism versus lability at the genu...

Aim Studying beta diversity, or the variation in species composition among communities, can give insights into plant community assembly over space and time. If different biomes show contrasting large‐scale beta‐diversity patterns, this can indicate divergent evolutionary histories or ecological processes that then drive species turnover among commu...

How woody floras have evolved to cope with seasonal drought is still poorly known, especially in tropical Africa, which experiences a drier and more seasonal climate compared to other tropical regions. Here, we characterized the phylogenetic and climatic distribution of three key traits associated with desiccation avoidance or tolerance, focusing o...

Although forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are known to use logged forests, the impact of selective logging on this critically endangered species has never been well established. Considering the potential of some logged areas to serve as other effective area‐based conservation measures, aligning with the Convention on Biological Diversity's 30/...

Niche conservatism is prevalent during the evolution of plant lineages. However, inferring biome niche lability and its impact on tropical tree species diversification is currently limited. To better understand biome niche lability and its effect on diversification rates, we analyzed an endemic lineage of African tropical trees, testing whether bio...

Seeds contained in the soil bank can be too small to quantify visually. Concerned timber species are usually identified after germination trials in the nursery, which is time consuming. This study explores a new approach based on near infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) coupled with chemometric tools. It focuses on the soil seed bank of the ce...

Aim Central Africa shelters diverse and iconic megafauna, which is threatened by climate and land-use changes and increased hunting-induced defaunation. Though crucial for coordinating regional conservation actions, how species assemblages are spatially structured remains poorly understood. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap for mammals ac...

Secondary metabolites are essential for plant survival and reproduction. Wild undomesticated and tropical plants are expected to harbor highly diverse metabolomes. We investigated the metabolomic diversity of two morphologically similar trees of tropical Africa, Erythrophleum suaveolens and E. ivorense, known for particular secondary metabolites na...

In Africa, while some plant groups and specifically genera are strictly associated to specific biomes, evidence of widely distributed genera transcending biome or habitat boundaries have also been reported for herbaceous plants and for tree genera. In this thesis, we aim at understanding the evolutionary processes that allowed particular tropical t...

Generally, tree species load photoassimilates passively into the phloem, while herbaceous species load actively. These phloem loading strategies have implications for phloem sugar concentration and growth potential. Whereas, in previous research, phloem loading identification was performed with 14 C-autoradiography, we suggest 11 C-autoradiography,...

In tropical Africa, evidence of widely distributed genera transcending biomes or habitat boundaries has been reported. The evolutionary processes that allowed these lineages to disperse and adapt into new environments are far from being resolved. To better understand these processes, we propose an integrated approach, based on the eco-physio-morpho...

Background and aims-The isolation of populations inside forest refugia during past climate changes has widely been hypothesized as a major driver of tropical plant diversity. Environmental conditions can also influence patterns of diversity by driving divergent selection leading to local adaptation and, potentially, ecological speciation. Genetic a...

Cette étude évalue l’abondance des graines d’Erythrophleum suaveolens dans la banque de semences du sol des forêts denses humides d’Afrique centrale. Les travaux ont été menés au Nord-Congo dans deux types forestiers : la forêt à Celtis sur des sols argilo-sableux à sablo-argileux et la forêt à Manilkara sur des sols sableux. Les tiges d’E. suaveol...

With the ongoing climate change, African rainforests are expected to experience severe drought events in the future. In Africa, the tropical genus Erythrophleum (Fabaceae) includes two forest sister timber tree species displaying contrasting geographical distributions. Erythrophleum ivorense is adapted to wet evergreen Guineo-Congolian forests, whe...

Aim In tropical Africa, savannas cover huge areas, have high plant species richness and are considered as a major natural resource for most countries. There is, however, little information available on their floristics and biogeography at the continental scale, despite the importance of such information for our understanding of the drivers of speci...

Aim In tropical Africa, savannas cover huge areas, have high plant species richness and are considered as a major natural resource for most countries. There is, however, little information available on their floristics and biogeography at the continental scale, despite the importance of such information for our understanding of the drivers of speci...

Selective logging remains a widespread practice in tropical forests, yet the long-term effects of timber harvest on juvenile tree (i.e., sapling) recruitment across the hundreds of species occurring in most tropical forests remain difficult to predict. This uncertainty could potentially exacerbate threats to some of the thousands of timber-valuable...

Selective‐logging remains a widespread practice in tropical forests, yet the long‐term effects of timber‐harvest on juvenile tree (i.e., sapling) recruitment across the hundreds of species occurring in most tropical forests, remain difficult to predict. This uncertainty could potentially exacerbate threats to some of the thousands of timber‐valuabl...

The genus Erythrophleum (Leguminosae) includes about 12 species widely distributed in the tropical rainforests. Within the genus, Erythrophleum suaveolens (Guill. et Perr.) and Erythrophleum ivorense (A. Chev) displayed high adaptability to different soil and climate conditions and they have been co-opted into multipurpose agriculture throughout th...

Species distribution within plant communities results from both the influence of deterministic processes, related to environmental conditions, and neutral processes related to dispersal limitation and stochastic events, the relative importance of each factor depending on the observation scale. Assessing the relative contribution of environment nece...

Palaeoecological and archaeological studies have demonstrated that human populations have long inhabited the moist forests of central Africa. However, spatial and temporal patterns of human activities have hardly been investigated with satisfactory accuracy. In this study, we propose to characterize past human activities at local scale by using a s...

Tropical forests of Central Africa constitute the second most important block of moist forest of the world. Little is known, however, about past vegetation in this region that remains underexplored (Vleminckx et al. 2014; Morin-Rivat et al. 2014). Determining the past specific composition of these forests could allow bringing insights into their ev...

In palaeoenvironmental studies, charred botanical remains have rarely been identified to the species level before being sent to radiocarbon dating. Moreover, the age of most tropical spp. and thereby the age of the carbon sequestered during plant growth is not known. Dating unidentified charred wood in the tropics should be thus treated with cautio...

Introduction. Widespread in Africa, the Erythrophleum genus includes four tropical tree species with a high economic and socio-cultural value: Erythrophleum ivorense, Erythrophleum suaveolens, Erythrophleum africanum and Erythrophleum lasianthum. Appropriate knowledge of the ecology and the distribution of these species is required for their sustai...

Des études paléoécologiques et archéologiques ont démontré que les populations humaines ont de longue date investi les forêts humides d’Afrique Centrale. Les occupations humaines ont toutefois été peu documentées en raison de difficultés relatives à l’accès au terrain. Nous présentons ici une méthodologie systématique basée sur la quantification et...

Tropical forests of Central Africa constitute the second most important block of moist forest of the world. However little is known about their past evolution. Indeed, determining the past specific composition of these forests could allow modeling their evolution over time and providing data about their resilience capacity facing global change. To...

Recently, several authors gathered data about the presence of past human populations in tropical regions covered by dense forest nowadays. In central Africa, there is a growing body of evidence for past human settlements along the Atlantic coast, but very little information is available further inland. In this perspective, soil records seem to be t...

Identifier les indices d’activités humaines anciennes et les mettre en relation avec la composition floristique actuelle grâce à une approche multidisciplinaire.

This is an introduction about wood charcoal properties, collection and taxonomical identification in the framework of palaeoecological studies in Central Africa through examples of possible applications.

La forêt tropicale africaine a longtemps été considérée comme vierge du passage de l’homme. Cependant, plusieurs études récentes en paléoécologie et archéologie ont démontré la présence d’activités humaines anciennes à partir d’indices paléoenvironnementaux (i.e. pollens de plantes anthropophiles) et d’artefacts (i.e. tessons de céramique). Ces étu...

For conservation biology and sustainable management, the natural character of tropical forest is a crucial issue. Its assessment is usually based on ecological proxies such as forest composition and structure. However the estimation made on this basis only considers short term processes at a local scale. In contrast the long term processes are appr...