GROUP DESCRIPTION

Group Description

The Plant-Animal Interactions (PAI) research group is a new group that was established following work carried out in 2013-17. The group was created due to the increasing appreciation that plant-animal interactions such as pollination and seed dispersal are critical for the ecosystem function and the ecosystem services they provide us. Disentangling the patterns, mechanisms, and consequences of these PAI in natural and human-disturbed landscapes is critical for biodiversity conservation as well as for human wellbeing.

The components of this emerging and productive research line investigate PAI using ecological, microevolutionary, and applied frameworks; hence, we are also committed to conservation and restoration endeavours. Among other main topics, we focus on:

1. how mutualistic and antagonistic PAI mediate plant regeneration and genetic diversity recruitment,
2. how habitat fragmentation and PAI intermingle to impinge the gene flow among plant populations,
3. the extent to which global change (defaunation, climate change, habitat degradation, etc) alter PAI critical for plant reproduction and survival,
4. providing specific predictions and guidance for habitat restoration by integrating into agent-based models spatially-explicit information on plant population genetics, seed dispersers and pollinators? behaviour, and plant demography.

Team

Publications

Projects

Student Supervisions