Simone C. Cappellari Rabeling

Simone C. Cappellari Rabeling is a Carl-Zeiss Principal Investigator in the Department of Plant Evolutionary Biology at the University of Hohenheim's Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. She is an evolutionary ecologist specializing in plant-pollinator interactions at both species and community levels, with a focus on highly diverse habitats including the Brazilian Cerrado and Neotropical regions.

Her research centers on specialized pollination systems and how specialization affects the structural properties of plant-pollinator communities. She investigates mechanisms that promote the coexistence of specialists in nature through field studies of plant reproductive biology combined with niche ecology analyses and pollination network theory. Most of her work focuses on the plant family Malpighiaceae in South America, and she has recently expanded her research to include deceptive pollination in the genus Ophrys in collaboration with Prof. Philipp Schlüter.

Dr. Cappellari Rabeling's current projects include:

• Community ecology of Cerrado plants
• Niche ecology of Malpighiaceae
• Evolutionary ecology of Ophrys pollination in the Mediterranean region

Her publication record demonstrates consistent contributions to understanding plant-pollinator relationships, with research spanning chemical ecology of floral rewards, bee behavior, network dynamics, and evolutionary adaptations in pollination systems. Her work combines field observations with theoretical approaches to reveal how species traits influence community composition and dynamics.

Dr. Cappellari Rabeling has built a distinguished career through multiple postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, University of Rochester, and Arizona State University, where she served as a Research Assistant Professor before joining the University of Hohenheim in 2022 as a Carl-Zeiss Principal Investigator.