Speaker
Description
Fleshy fruits have evolved to attract seed-dispersing animals to ingest the seed and disperse it away from the mother tree. Fruit functional traits and trait matching with animal functional diversity is a major driver of plant-frugivore network structure and hence seed dispersal patterns. While traits such as fruit color or size have been thoroughly studied, fruit chemical diversity, and particularly fruit scent, remains largely in the dark. While interest has increased in recent years, the mechanistic links and evolutionary patterns leading to plant-disperser chemical communication are still unknown. The talk will describe work at the Evolutionary Ecology (EvE) group at iDiv addressing these questions. It will report unpublished results from multiple PhD, MSc and BSc projects: comparative metabolomics to understand the evolution of fruit chemical diversity; microbiology to uncover the role of the fruit microbiome in animal-plant interactions; behavioral ecology to understand how fruit traits drive animal-behavior; chemistry to identify drivers of variation in fruit nutrient profiles; and physiology to understand fruit ripening patterns.
| Status Group | Senior Scientist |
|---|---|
| Poster Presentation Option | Undecided/No preference |
