August 19-24, 2019. Turku, Finland
European Society for Evolutionary Biology. ESEB
Symposium #30.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
- the evolution of pollinator foraging behaviour
- how flower traits affect pollinator behaviour or evolution
- how flexibility or constraints of behaviour affect plant reproduction or evolution
- how plants manipulate pollinator behavior.
Invited speakers:
Aimee Dunlap. University of Missouri, St. Louis. Cognitive Ecology Lab
Allan Ellis. Stellenbosch University
Organisers:
Mario Vallejo-Marin. University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. Website.
Avery Russell. University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Website.
Submit your abstract and select Symposium #30. https://eseb2019.fi/info
Abstract Submission opens in February 2019. Check the conference website for details
Abstract
Flowering plants display an amazingly diverse range of strategies to manipulate the behaviour of pollinators and maximise reproductive success. Yet pollinators often use complex and flexible behaviours, which in turn affect ecological and evolutionary interactions with the plants they visit. Studies of plant-pollinator interactions have a long tradition in evolutionary biology, yet these interactions are usually studied from either plant or pollinator perspective and rarely integrate both. Literature with a plant perspective considers how floral traits (e.g., colour, scent, size, shape) affect pollinator visitation and the morphological fit between plant and pollinator, but typically ignores how pollinators evolve and modify their behaviour. Literature with a pollinator perspective focuses heavily on cognition (e.g., learning of floral cues, motor routines to access rewards, effects of reward quality), but rarely examines how cognition affects plant reproduction and evolution. Recent work has started to bridge the gap between behavioural and cognition studies and floral evolution and we are therefore at an exciting time to bring together researchers working at the intersection of what are often treated as parallel fields of study. Our symposium aims to attract the interest of researchers across career stages and study systems addressing eco-evolutionary feedbacks between floral evolution and pollinator behaviour.
Not sure if your proposed topic fits within this symposium? Contact us! mario.vallejo@stir.ac.uk, ALR204@pitt.edu