Dr. Susan Laurance

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Dr. Susan Laurance completed a PhD at the University of New England followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the NASA Large-scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon (2002-2004) and the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama (2004-2006). She is currently a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and has been a Tropical Leader and Senior Lecturer based at the School of Marine and Tropical Biology at James Cook University in Cairns since 2010.

Dr. Laurance’s research is primarily focused on assessment of vulnerability and responses of tropical communities to environmental change. She is especially interested in the impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change on community composition and dynamics, particularly with reference to key affected groups such as rainforest plants, birds, mammals and mosquitoes.