By Samantha Weintraub PhD Student, University of Colorado, Boulder Ecology & Evolutionary Biology When most people wander through a tropical forest, they are awed by the diversity and abundance of plants, mammals and other members of the forest community they see.  While biodiversity is certainly a fantastic feature of tropical landscapes, my interests lie on the darker side of the ecosystem.  Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the force – I’m talking about the soil!  For an ecosystem ecologist, one of the most fascinating aspects of tropical ecology concerns how tropical...