ATBC 2020 Webinar Series in Tropical Ecology and Conservation: Webinar IVb

Biotic Interactions in Tropical Systems

OCTOBER 14, 2020 | 3-5PM (EST)

Tropical biology has been key to the development of theoretical advances and empirical investigations in studying biotic interactions, with a majority of the world’s biodiversity composed of tropical plants and their enemies and mutualists. In this webinar we highlight innovative perspectives in current research in the study of tropical biotic interactions. In particular, we hope to highlight ecological and evolutionary aspects of defensive traits, especially the consequences of coevolutionary interactions on plants and animals at both macro and micro evolutionary scales, for both interacting species as well as in the community context. The variation in the spatial and temporal scales of plant-animal-fungal interactions is explored among the three speakers in order to connect ideas that expand on the theme, with the expectation to bring out new hypotheses and approaches to be tested in tropical systems in the future.

Moderators

Practical and simple approaches to incorporate plant chemical defenses in studies of plant-animal interactions

Diego Salazar, Florida International University, Miami, USA | @chem_eco

During this short webinar, we will introduce the basic ecological and evolutionary ideas on chemically mediated plant-animal-fungal interactions, placing special focus on tropical systems. We will give an overview of the most notable and common plant secondary metabolites. Finally, we will present practical approaches to incorporate plant secondary chemistry on the study of plant-animal interactions.

Protium (Burseraceae) as a model system to investigate the importance of biotic interactions in driving the origin and maintenance of tropical rainforest diversity

Paul Fine, ATBC Capacity Building Committee, and University of California, Berkeley, USA

I will describe 20 years of research in Amazonian forests on Protium, a common and diverse clade of small, mid and canopy trees. I will show how taxonomy and phylogenies allow for integrating ecological and evolutionary approaches to understanding diversity. This framework has led to understanding plant strategies (the growth-defense tradeoff), ecological speciation across environmental gradients, and coexistence of species by partitioning “enemy-free space” by evolving divergent chemical defenses. I will finish with the future directions in Protium research and why field research and natural history and taxonomy is key for progress in our understanding of tropical diversity

Ecological and evolutionary dynamics of plant-caterpillar interaction networks in a tropical dry forest

Karina Boege, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), México

Tropical dry forests in Mexico are characterized by their high biodiversity with important levels of endemic species, but sadly are strongly threatened by human activities. I will talk about 13 years of research on plant-caterpillar interactions in this ecosystem, including their dynamics across a forest successional chrono-sequence from recently abandoned pastures to mature forests, and the resilience of their interaction networks to extreme weather events. I will also talk about variability in diet breadth of the most common caterpillar species, as a function of interannual variation in precipitation, and will end describing the coevolutionary information arms race between plants and specialist caterpillars.