Diego F Correa

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc Position at The University of Queensland

Aim: We used abiotic and biotic factors as predictors of the proportions of different dispersal systems in Neotropical forests, to test whether the geographical patterns in dispersal systems are mostly related to the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits or to the availability of dispersal agents.Location101 one-hectare veget...

Biofuel production is a key strategy for reducing CO2 emissions globally and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades, particularly in tropical developing countries. The adoption of sustainable biofuel production technologies that do not place large demands on agricultural or forested lands, has the potential to make a substantia...

Microalgae are a promising alternative for future biofuel production. Compared to first-and second-generation biofuels, microalgal production systems offer higher biofuel productivities per unit area and do not necessarily depend on fertile soils or freshwater. However, little is known about how microalgal biofuel production on a scale large enough...

Aim To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperser‐avail...

Protected areas are important for preventing biodiversity declines, yet indicators of species' trends in protected areas rarely include threatened species. We use data from the first national Threatened Species Index developed in Australia to report on trends for threatened and near‐threatened birds inside and outside terrestrial and marine protect...

We describe the geographical variation in tree species composition across Amazonian forests and show how environmental conditions are associated with species turnover. Our analyses are based on 2023 forest inventory plots (1 ha) that provide abundance data for a total of 5188 tree species. Within-plot species composition reflected both local enviro...

Livestock grazing is a major land use in the Great Barrier Reef Catchment Area (GBRCA). Heightened grazing density coupled with inadequate land management leads to accelerated soil erosion and increased sediment loads being transported downstream. Ultimately, these increased sediment loads impact the water quality of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) la...

Environmental offsetting has been developed as a mechanism to facilitate the benefits from economic development while avoiding or minimizing environmental harm. This is achieved by compensating for environmental impacts at one location by generating equivalent environmental improvements elsewhere. However, experience with biodiversity and carbon of...

Amazonia’s floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree...

Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated w...

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we inve...

ARTICLE Mapping density, diversity and species-richness of the Amazon tree flora Using 2.046 botanically-inventoried tree plots across the largest tropical forest on Earth, we mapped tree species-diversity and tree species-richness at 0.1-degree resolution, and investigated drivers for diversity and richness. Using only location, stratified by fore...

Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Mo...

Free access link until April 28, 2023: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gjBLcZ3WyGWm Ecosystem restoration conventionally focuses on ecological targets. However, while ecological targets are crucial to mobilizing political, social, and financial capital, they do not encapsulate the need to: integrate social, economic, and ecological dimensions and...

In a time of rapid global change, the question of what determines patterns in species abundance distribution remains a priority for understanding the complex dynamics of ecosystems. The constrained maximization of information entropy provides a framework for the understanding of such complex systems dynamics by a quantitative analysis of important...

Monitoring is critical to assess management effectiveness, but broadscale systematic assessments of monitoring to evaluate and improve recovery efforts are lacking. We compiled 1808 time series from 71 threatened and near‐threatened terrestrial and volant mammal species and subspecies in Australia (48% of all threatened mammal taxa) to compare rela...

The Altillanura is a unique ecosystem within the Colombian Llanos, characterized by well-drained savannas and extensive riparian forests. The Altillanura harbors a rich assemblage of species, largely understudied and currently under threat by large-scale and unplanned agribusiness. Moreover, the number of public protected areas in the Colombian Lla...

Studies of dynamics and biomass accumulation are essential for understanding forest functioning and productivity. They are also valuable when planning strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. This study was conducted in five one-hectare plots of gallery forest in the Orinoco basin (three in terra firme and two in ig...

In a time of rapid global change, the question of what determines patterns in species abundance distribution remains a priority for understanding the complex dynamics of ecosystems. The constrained maximization of information entropy provides a framework for the understanding of such complex systems dynamics by a quantitative analysis of important...

Supplementary Information

Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia...

Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, but the estimated species richness is very much debated. Here, we apply an ensemble of parametric estimators and a novel technique that includes conspecific spatial aggregation to an extended database of forest plots with up-to-date taxonomy. We show that the species abundance distribution of Amazonia...

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such “monodominant” forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tr...

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tr...

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tr...

Sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels are urgently needed to avoid severe climate impacts and further environmental degradation. Microalgae are one of the most productive crops globally and do not need to compete for arable land or freshwater resources. Hence, they may become a promising, more sustainable cultivation alternative for the large‐sc...

Novel energy production systems are needed that not only offer reductions in greenhouse gas emissions but also cause fewer overall environmental impacts. How to identify and implement more sustainable biofuel production alternatives, and how to overcome economic challenges for their implementation, is a matter of debate. In this study, the environm...

The sustainable, efficient production of biofuel can lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, lowered climate change impact and increased security owing to the fulfilment of global energy demands. Microalgae have been shown as an attractive feedstock for renewable fuel production, such as biodiesel and biogas. To date, more effort has been p...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatially biased which may generate inaccuracies in SDMs. Here, we test how the distribution of NHCs and Ma...

Belongs to paper Species Distribution Modelling: Contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data by Gomes et al.

Comparing the results of modelling the area of occupancy with MaxEnt and with inverse distance weighting (IDW). Analysis results for the predicted area of occupancy as calculated by Maxent and IDW methods. The analyses were conducted for 170 of all 227 hyperdominant species that had MaxEnt’s predicted environmental suitability significantly differ...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatially biased which may generate inaccuracies in SDMs. Here, we test how the distribution of NHCs and Ma...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology and conservation. Presence-only SDMs such as MaxEnt frequently use natural history collections (NHCs) as occurrence data, given their huge numbers and accessibility. NHCs are often spatially biased which may generate inaccuracies in SDMs. Here, we test how the distribution of NHCs and Ma...

The extended flooding period in igapó imposes certain constraints that species need to overcome in order to successfully survive. Among the wide array of strategies that species need to adjust when living in flooded systems, seed dispersal is a major factor to guarantee successful colonization. Seed dispersal is one of the most important mechanisms...

The conservation of tropical forests has become an important mechanism for the mitigation of the negative effects of climate change. Countries located in the Neotropical region, Central and South America, are aiming to understand the drivers of carbon stocks of their forests to build a better capacity for forest management. In this study, we calcul...

Energy and fuel demands, which are currently met primarily using fossil fuels, are expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. Burning fossil fuels results in the increase of net atmospheric CO2 and climate change, hence there is widespread interest in identifying sustainable alternative fuel sources. Biofuels are one such alternative...

The study of plant dispersal systems improves our understanding of forest regeneration, the dynamics of plant populations and the ecological relationships that emerge within ecosystems. In this study we analyzed the patterns of seed dispersal systems for Colombia, in relation to the Amazonian, Andean, Caribbean, Upper Magdalena, Middle Magdalena, O...

La estacionalidad en las fluctuaciones del nivel del agua en las planicies de inundación generan cambios dramáticos en Ias comunidades de plantas que se ven sometidas a altos niveles de estrés y en consecuencia existe una gran variedad de bosques inundables asociados a los ríos tropicales. En Colombia se encuentran distribuidos ampliamente en Chocó...

La percepción remota y los sistemas satelitales de observación de la Tierra han jugado un papel fundamental en la obtención de información sobre vastas regiones, a costos que pueden ser superados por los beneficios sociales y económicos que representan. Las distintas aplicaciones han permitido el avance de un gran número de disciplinas científicas,...

Dispersal syndromes are key functional traits found in every species of vascular plants. Because of their importance for plant recruitment, they help us to uncover the complex relationships found in tropical forests, and in a similar way to structural diversity and floristic composition, they show patterns along environmental and anthropogenic grad...

The prevalence of particular dispersal syndromes in tropical forests may be associated with different landscape units. We evaluated seed dispersal syndromes in three different forests in central Amazonia (Hilly and Terrace in terra firme and Igapó, a floodplain). We established three 1-ha plots at the Mosiro-ItajuraCaparú Biological Station, in eac...

Gallery forests of the Colombian Eastern Plains are important reservoirs of global biodiversity as a result of the small area occupied and its high structural and functional heterogeneity. However, to date there are no one-hectare permanent plots reported in the gallery forests of the seasonal savannas of the Colombian Eastern Plains. This study pr...

RESUMEN Las palmas constituyen un grupo clave para comprender los procesos de regeneración en bosques montanos neotropicales, por su alta representatividad estructural, funcional y ecológica. En el Santuario de Fauna y Flora Otún-Quimbaya (SFFOQ) se evaluó la regeneración de palmas a partir de cinco transectos de 50 x 4 m (0,1 ha) por tipo de bosqu...