Hi! My name is Daniel Falster. I am Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. I’m a plant ecologist working where functional ecology, community ecology and theory meet. I want to know how the traits of a species — how tall it grows, how it builds its leaves and wood, how it responds to fire — shape its growth, survival and reproduction, and how those differences add up to the structure, diversity and dynamics of whole vegetation communities. My lab tackles this with maths and computer models, continental-scale datasets, and fieldwork measuring plant traits, growth and tree rings. I am passionate about science, open data, reproducible research, and teaching biologists to code.
Research questions: The central goal of my lab is to predict which plants grow where, and why, from ecological and evolutionary first principles. At its heart is a long-standing puzzle: how do so many species coexist when they all compete for the same light, water and nutrients? Increasingly we also ask how fire and a changing climate are reshaping Australia’s vegetation, and how fast forests grow and store carbon. The sorts of questions we address include:
- How does competition for light select for particular kinds of traits and vegetation structure?
- How do trait-based trade-offs in plant function maintain functional diversity, enabling species to coexist even under competition?
- How do functional traits influence the growth and life cycle of plant species?
- How well can we predict the dynamics of vegetation, in terms of size structure, biomass, and species diversity?
- How do fire and climate shape the traits, growth strategies and distributions of Australia’s plants?
- How fast do trees grow, and how much carbon will regenerating woodlands store over the coming decades?
Alongside these fundamental questions, we build AusTraits — national, open data infrastructure for the traits of Australia’s plants — and apply our models to real-world climate problems such as carbon farming and forest regeneration. See our Research page for an overview of the four themes.
Interested in PhD, Masters or Honours? I am interested in supervising students seeking to apply quantitative methods to address the types of questions outlined above. If you are interested see #opportunities for more info.
In 2025 I received the UNSW Students’ Choice Teaching Award — one of five recipients from 241 nominations across the University. Here is what some of my students had to say:
