Liana Dynamics in Southeast Asia: Causes and Consequences

Tropical ecosystems are particularly valuable not only because they harbour high biodiversity, but also because they provide a number of ecosystem services, carbon storage being among the most important ones. Forests in the tropics have been under significant pressure due to timber harvest, land use change and fragmentation. Furthermore, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that climate change is likely to have a significant impapact on tropical systems. The interaction between forest degradation and climate change threatens the sustainability of tropical ecosystems and good knowledge of the forest dynamics is needed to inform effective forest management and conservation efforts.

Lianas are large woody vines that have been observed to raise in abundance in neotropical forests most likely due to human-mediated global change. They have the potential to contribute to forest degradation by inducing collateral damage during tree fall by pulling neighbouring trees down, smothering seedlings and biasing forest regeneration towards faster growing species, ultimately reducing the forest capacity to store carbon. Therefore, pantropical understanding of liana dynamics is of increasing importance.

Lianas in Southeast Asia have been particularly understudied and this project aims to contribute to filing this knowledge gap. Analysis of liana cover will determine what are the best predictors of diversity and abundance and comparison between is rare vs. common and early vs. late-successional species will pinpoint the traits that make lianas successful. Unprecedented large scale sequencing of functional elements in non-model organisms will provide insights of liana evolution and employed strategies. Further components of the project will look into the impact of liana on carbon storage as well as effect of palm oil cultivation and forest fragmentation on liana cover