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Jen Sanger Canopy ecologist
J
en Sanger has always been a plant nerd, but it was in the high-elevation cloud forests of Mexico that she realised her true passion: the worlds of the canopy, far above our heads. “I came across these forests, and there were just whole gardens of epiphytes, like a forest within a forest,” Sanger recalls. Epiphytes are plants that grow on another plant, like a fern, orchid, moss or lichen. They aren’t parasitic, Sanger says: “They’re just using the tree as structure.” Sanger had completed her honours degree in plant physiology, studying an endangered eucalypt on the frozen central plateau of Tasmania/lutruwita. She took off travelling for several years. Then, the cloud-forest epiphytes of Mexico reminded her of her undergraduate degree 114 COSMOS MAGAZINE
at the University of Queensland, where she’d volunteered for a study looking at insects in tropical Australian rainforests, in which tree climbers were a critical element. The idea for a PhD was born. But finding a supervisor was tricky. “There was literally only one guy who did his PhD in the ’80s who had studied epiphytes in Australia,” Sanger says – James Kirkpatrick at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), who ended up being her supervisor. With a tree-climbing course in the US under her belt, Sanger embarked on her PhD at UTAS to look at the diversity of epiphytes in rainforest canopies. She spent her winters climbing and collecting data in tropical Queensland with her husband, Steve Pearce, as her research assistant.
Together, they climbed around 250 trees for her thesis. “The thing that we really discovered was this new way of looking at the forest,” Sanger says. “Here I was as a forest ecologist who thought I knew forests really well, but going up into the canopy of these trees was just a whole other experience.” Along with colleagues in New Zealand/ Aotearoa, Sanger and Pearce, an accomplished photographer, developed a technique to take whole-tree portraits, by melding a series of images taken from a neighbouring tree. They’ve captured many stunning portraits, including giant eucalypts in Tasmania and others around the world, from Taiwan to the US. They also founded The Tree Projects to generate interest in Tasmania’s forests. Their approach seems to reflect new approaches in science. “Everyone used to think it was survival of the fittest, and all these trees are fighting one another for resources,” Sanger says. “But in reality, it’s a lot more beneficial to cooperate as a community rather than just trying to fight it out on your own.” EXPLORE MORE ABOUT TASMANIA’S TALLEST TREES ON PAGE 62
LEFT: ROB BLAKERS. ABOVE: IAN CONNELLAN
Going up into the canopy of these trees was just a whole other experience.
