Alejandra Leal,^1,*,** Juan Carlos Berrío,^2,*** Elena Raimúndez,^3,**** Bibiana Bilbao<sup>1,*****

1</sup>aDepartment of Environmental Studies, Universidad Simón Bolivar, Carretera Hoyo de la Puerta Baruta,
²bDepartment of Geography, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdo
³cDepartment of the Biology of Organisms, Universidad Simón Bolivar, Carretera Hoyo de la Puerta Baru

^*Corresponding author. Email: aveleal@yahoo.com
^** ALEJANDRA LEAL works in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela. She is involved in research into the ecology and palynology of tropical ecosystems in lowland and upland savannaforest mosaics of Venezuela. Recently she was awarded a Ph.D. for a dissertation on the Holocene vegetation, climatic changes and wildfire regimes in the Gran Sabana, Venezuelan Guayana.
^***JUAN CARLOS BERRÍO studied biology at the Universidad Javeriana, Colombia and was subsequently awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is a member of the Leicester Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Research group at the University of Leicester, UK. His research interests include the patterns of distribution and the dynamics of tropical vegetation and the biogeographical control of plant species and their relationships with the main drivers of climate change. Juan Carlos has conducted research throughout Latin America within different ecosystems including the tropical rain forest (TRF) of the Amazon Basin and Chocó Province, inter-montane dry biomes and the savanna ecosystem and its boundaries with the TRF.
^**** ELENA RAIMÚNDEZ obtained a degree in Biology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Doctor of Science from the same institution. As part of her doctoral thesis, she studied the reproductive biology of plants from some communities in the Gran Sabana Plateau. She is currently a member of staff at the Department of Organisms Biology, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela. Her research interests are the reproductive biology of wild plants and the effect of pre-dispersal seed predation by insects on the reproductive efficiency of plants.
^***** BIBIANA BILBAO holds a degree in biology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Venezuela. She is an associate professor and head of the Ecological Process and Plant Communities Dynamics Laboratory in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela. Bibiana has undertaken research on tropical savannas and fire ecology. She is currently leader of the interdisciplinary project ‘Risk factors in habitat reduction in the Canaima National Park: vulnerability and tools for sustainable development’, which won the European Union Award for Innovation in Sustainable Development for 2010.