sucession | Ecology of the past

Ecology of the Past blog contributor Nina Witteveen was awarded the Hugo de Vries prize on 13 June 2025 at the Botanic Gardens in Nijmegen. The Hugo de Vries prize is awarded by the KNbv (Royal Dutch Botanical Society) and the Stichting Hugo de Vries fonds (Hugo de Vries foundation) for the best PhD thesis in Botany defended at a Dutch University. This years prize was awarded to Nina for her thesis “Long-term Forest Recovery in Amazonia: Insights from Phytolith Analysis” (University of Amsterdam) which was completed under the supervision of Crystal McMichael.

After much debate the jury decided to award two first prizes this year, with the other prize also going to a tropical PhD thesis. That of Tomonari Matsuo for his thesis “Drivers and mechanisms of tropical secondary forest succession” (Wageningen University & Research).

To find out more about the prize and how to submit a thesis for the award visit: https://www.knbv.eu/hugo-de-vries-prijs/

Follow Nina’s journey into tropical palaeoecology through her blog posts here: https://ecologyofthepast.info/?s=nina+witteveen

Nina presenting here PhD thesis at the prize giving of the Hugo de Vries award 2025!

The Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NAEM) 2019 takes place in the 12 and 13 February. This annual showcase of predominantly Dutch based ecological research will take place, as usual, at Conference Centre “De Werelt” (Lunteren). I am particularly excited this year as, along with Marielos Pena Carlos and Patrick Jansen, I am co-convening a session on “Tropical Ecology”. The first time I have contributed to the program in this way. Our session will be on the second day of the conference and contain the following exciting presentations:

15:00 Predator avoidance and prey tracking in a Neotropical forest (Constant Swinkels, Wageningen University & Research)
15:20 The role of fig volatiles in pollinator specificity and fig diversity (Aafke Oldenbeuving, Naturalis Biodiversity Center)
15:40 Mangrove Atlantis: Can mangroves keep up with extreme land-subsidence? (Celine van Bijsterveldt, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research)
16:00 Break
16:10 The fate of forests in agro-forest frontier landscapes, implications for conservation (Madelon Lohbeck, Wageningen University & Research)
16:30 Trends in the variability of Specific Leaf Area of paramo vegetation during succession (Marian Cabrera, University of Amsterdam)
16:50 Succession dynamics of tree and soil fungal communities in regenerating tropical rainforests are strongly influenced by regional species pool and abiotic factors (Irene Adamo, Naturalis Biodiversity Center)

Ecology of the past

Hugo de Vries Prijs winner!

Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2019