Research Interests
My main research interest is functional significance of diverse physiological and morphological traits of plants, especially among tropical woody species. In particular, I am interested in allocation-based trade-offs between survival and growth rates, both at leaf- and whole-plant level. In species-rich tropical forests, plants that survive well in the shaded understory grow slowly, whereas plants that have suites of traits that enhance growth rates tend to survive poorly. Such trade-offs are ubiquitous and they reflect life-history strategies of the species as well as their preferred regeneration environment; opportunistic species that rapidly colonize and reproduce in ephemeral resource-rich environment (such as tree-fall gaps) vs. conservative strategy that grow slowly but persist with ability to withstand stress or competitive exploitation of key resource (i.e., light, in case of forest trees). These contrasting strategies result in contrasting suits of functional traits, including biomass allocation patterns, physical defense, photosynthetic rates, energy storage and other stress-tolerance mechanisms. Mechanistic understanding such multi trait correlations is important not only for basic ecology of community assembly, but for also ecology of biological invasions.
Representative Publications
Kitajima, K. and Poorter, L. 2008. Functional basis for resource niche
partitioning by tropical trees. In: Schnitzer, S. A. and Carson, W. P.
(eds.) Tropical Forest Community Ecology, Blackwell Science.
Kitajima, K. and Myers, J. A. 2008. Seedling ecophysiology: strategies
towards achievement of positive carbon balance. In: M. A. Leck, V. T.
Parker, and R. L. Simpson. Seedling Ecology and Evolution. Cambridge
University Press.
Alvarez-Clare, S. and Kitajima, K. 2007. Physical defense traits
enhance seedling survival of neotropical tree species. Functional
Ecology 21: 1044-1054.
Myers, J. A. and Kitajima, K. 2007. Carbohydrate storage enhances
seedling shade and stress tolerance in a neotropical forest. Journal of
Ecology 95: 383-395.
Poorter, L. and Kitajima, K. 2007. Carbohydrate storage and light
requirements of tropical moist and dry forest species. Ecology 88:
1000-1011.
Avalos, G., Mulkey, S. Kitajima, K. and Wright, S. J. 2007. Canopy
colonization strategies of two liana species in a tropical dry forest.
Biotropica 39: 393-399.
Kitajima, K., Fox, A. M., Satoh, T. and Nagamatsu, D. 2006. Cultivar
selection prior to introduction may increase invasiveness: evidence
from Ardisia crenata. Biological Invasions 8:1471-1482.
Kitajima, K., Mulkey, S. S., Wright, S. J. 2005. Variation in crown
light utilization characteristics among tropical canopy trees.
Annals of Botany 95: 535-547.