Speaker
Description
Fruits have evolved a range of traits to attract seed dispersers, in which chemical signals, such as scent, play a key role. Among these, aliphatic esters are notable for their consistent presence in ripe fruits of species that rely on frugivores for seed dispersal, yet their ecological role and evolutionary origin remain poorly understood. Emerging evidence suggests that these compounds may function as honest signals of sugar content, linking metabolite profiles with fruit nutritional quality and potentially reflecting co-evolutionary dynamics between plants and their animal dispersers. In this study, we use an ecometabolomic framework to investigate the functional role of aliphatic esters in fruit–frugivore communication in up to 20 Ficus species in Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot with a diverse frugivore community, including lemurs. By integrating thermal desorption gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GCMS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), we quantify fruit volatile profiles and sugar content to test whether esters serve as reliable indicators of reward. Additionally, we sequence the alcohol acyltransferase (AAT) gene to examine whether ester production is associated with dispersal ecology. Our research sheds new light on the ecological and evolutionary roles of secondary metabolites in plant–animal interactions, revealing how these chemical traits influence biodiversity patterns across scales. By leveraging metabolomic data, we demonstrate how eco-metabolomics can address key questions in chemical ecology, offering novel insights at both the molecular and ecosystem levels.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| Poster Presentation Option | No, I prefer to present only as a talk. |
