Participating researchers IRD

Jean-Christophe Pintaud (Steering commitee member)

Palm biologist with extensive field experience in the Neotropics. His research includes ecology of palms (community ecology, distribution patterns in relation to substrate), phylogeny based of both morphological and molecular characters and genetic diversity. He has developed several molecular markers, especially microsatellites, for various groups of palms, and applied them to the study of natural populations and crops. He has since 2002, based in Ecuador, coordinated thee Neotropical Palms programme of IRD in Ecuador, Peru and French Guiana.

Fabien Anthelme

Plant community ecologist. After spending two years in Niger conducting ecological studies in the Air-Ténéré reserve, he is currently based in Quito, where he is developing a program on the ecology of páramos and another on ecological factors driving speciation in the Andean Geonoma palm species. Since his PhD studies in France, he has specialized in positive interactions between plant species in extreme environments, i.e., how a species or groups of species can facilitate the establishment of others, using an approach based on in situ experimental ecology.

Francis Kahn

Senior Scientist at IRD, Honorary Professor at San Marcos University, Lima, Peru. He has spent 25 years in South America (Brazil, Ecuador and Peru) as botanist specialized in Amazonian palms, and cumulated a 12 years experience at IRD Representative in Peru, Ecuador and Niger. He has published numerous scientific papers and several books on palm taxonomy and ecology, and has taught several courses on these topics. Currently, he teaches Philosophy of Sciences in San Marcos University.