9806351 Harrison This U.S.-Brazil award will support a dissertation enhancement project involving Mr. Emilio M. Bruna of the University of California, Davis, under the supervision of Drs. Susan Harrison and Sharon Y. Strauss. The title of this project is "Effect of Habitat Fragmentation on the Reproduction and Population Dynamics of a Neotropical Herb (Heliconia acuminata)." Fieldwork will be done at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), administered by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA). The BDFFP is a large scale, experimental project designed specifically to study the effects of fragmentation in the tropics. Mr. Bruna will test the hypothesis that an observed pattern of reduced density in habitat fragments of the neotropical herb Heliconia acuminata is the result of lower population growth rate in habitat fragments, due to reduced levels of pollination, seed production, and seedling establishment. He will test this by determining, via a series of manipulative experiments, how and why reproductive success in H. acuminata varies, by monitoring long-term demographic plots in continuous forest and habitat fragments and, by incorporating these data into a matrix model to predict population dynamics. ***
