The focus of my research is diversity, ranging from the ecological and evolutionary processes that generate and maintain a wide variety of phenotypes and life-history strategies to the mechanisms that create and maintain temporal and spatial patterns of organismal distribution, relative abundance, and species richness. Members of my research group strive for mechanistic understanding of plant strategies and species interactions, per se and to provide explanations for the structure and dynamics of plant populations and communities, primarily within tropical and sub-tropical latitudes.
Some of my specific interests and current projects concern: (1) the relative importance of processes that maintain diversity within plant communities, (2) the relationships among soil fertility, plant productivity, and species diversity, (3) species interactions, e.g., seed predation and seed dispersal, and (4) the evolution of life-history strategies, especially regarding the sizes of seeds.
Students and post-docs interested in joining my research group may contact me via
the link to my e-mail address. Although the principal subjects of investigation for
members of my lab are tropical and sub-tropical plants – and often including their
interactions with other organisms – I encourage students within my research group to
develop projects that are tailored to, and motivated by, their own taxonomic and geographic interests.
Carlson, Jane E. & Kyle E. Harms. 2006. The evolution of gender-biased nectar production in hermaphroditic plants. The Botanical Review 72:179-205.
Muller-Landau, Helene C., Richard S. Condit, Kyle E. Harms, Christian O. Marks, Sean C. Thomas, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, George Chuyong, Leonardo Co, Stuart Davies, Robin Foster, Savitri Gunatilleke, Nimal Gunatilleke, Terese Hart, Stephen P. Hubbell, Akira Itoh, Abd Rahman Kassim, David Kenfack, James V. LaFrankie, Daniel Lagunzad, Hua Seng Lee, Elizabeth Losos, Jean-Remy Makana, Tatsuhiro Ohkubo, Cristian Samper, Raman Sukumar, I-Fang Sun, Nur Supardi M. N., Sylvester Tan, Duncan Thomas, Jill Thompson, Renato Valencia, Martha Isabel Vallejo, Gorky Villa Muñoz, Takuo Yamakura, Jess K. Zimmerman, Handanakere Shivaramaiah Dattaraja, Shameema Esufali, Pamela Hall, Fangliang He, Consuelo Hernandez, Somboon Kiratiprayoon, Hebbalalu S. Suresh, Christopher Wills & Peter Ashton. 2006. Comparing tropical forest tree size distributions with the predictions of metabolic ecology and equilibrium models. Ecology Letters 9:589-602.
Wills, Christopher, Kyle E. Harms, Richard Condit, David King,
Jill Thompson, Fangliang He, Helene C. Muller-Landau, Peter Ashton, Elizabeth
Losos, Liza Comita, Stephen Hubbell, James LaFrankie, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin,
H. S. Dattaraja, Stuart Davies, Shameema Esufali, Robin Foster, Nimal Gunatilleke,
Savitri Gunatilleke, Pamela Hall, Akira Itoh, Robert John, Somboon Kiratiprayoon,
Suzanne Loo de Lao, Marie Massa, Cheryl Nath, Md. Nur Supardi Noor, Abdul Rahman
Kassim, Raman Sukumar, Hebbalalu Satyanarayana Suresh, I-Fang Sun, Sylvester
Tan, Takuo Yamakura & Jess Zimmerman. 2006. Non-random processes maintain
diversity in tropical forests. Science 311:527-531.
Harms, Kyle E., Jennifer S. Powers & Rebecca A. Montgomery. 2004. Variation in small sapling density, understory cover and resource availability in four Neotropical forests. Biotropica 36:40-51.
Harms, Kyle E. & C. E. Timothy Paine. 2003. Regeneración de árboles tropicales e implicaciones para el manejo de bosques naturales. Ecosistemas 3. (electronic journal: http://www.aeet.org/ecosistemas/033/revision2.htm)
Harms, Kyle E., Richard Condit, Stephen P. Hubbell & Robin B. Foster. 2001. Habitat associations of trees and shrubs in a 50-ha neotropical forest plot. Journal of Ecology 89:947-959.
Gilbert, Gregory S., Kyle E. Harms, David N. Hamill & Stephen P. Hubbell. 2001. Effects of seedling size, El Niño drought, seedling density, and distance to nearest conspecific adult on 6-year survival of Ocotea whitei seedlings in Panama. Oecologia 127:509-516.
Harms, Kyle E., S. Joseph Wright, Osvaldo Calderón, Andrés Hernández & Edward Allen Herre. 2000. Pervasive density-dependent recruitment enhances seedling diversity in a tropical forest. Nature 404:493-495.
Harms, Kyle E. & James W. Dalling. 2000. A bruchid beetle and a viable seedling from a single diaspore of Attalea butyracea. Journal of Tropical Ecology 16:319-325.