Research Intern in the lab from 2021-2022.
I completed my B.Sc. at the Universidad del Valle in Colombia, my home country. For my undergraduate thesis, I conducted a year-long examination of an ant-garden plant community to understand how environmental conditions shape their diversity patterns. After graduating, I worked as a field assistant on tropical forest inventories and plots, including my research internship with the DEAD lab and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. There I led the data collection for a chronosequence study of wood decomposition over 40 years and 16,000 trees. At the same time, I investigated the effects of altitude on wood decomposition rates and microbial community composition, and the results were published with Dr. Evan Gora. As of early 2024, I am currently a 2022-2024 EU fellowship recipient for the Erasmus Mundus Master’s program in Biodiversity and Tropical Ecosystems (TROPIMUNDO), working on my master’s thesis which investigates the drivers of mangrove cover change using both remote sensing and mangrove restoration stakeholder perception analysis.
Search for Ángela Marcela Barrera-Bello's papers on the Research page