%0 Journal Article %T Homotopy types of independence complexes of forests %A Kazuhiro Kawamura %J Contributions to Discrete Mathematics %D 2010 %I University of Calgary %X Ehrenborg and Hetyei proved that the independence complex of an arbitrary forest is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a sphere. The present paper provides an inductive method of detecting the contractibility of the complex or the dimension of the sphere to which the complex is homotopy equivalent. %U http://cdm.math.ucalgary.ca/cdm/index.php/cdm/article/view/197