Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The sequence of events by which plants evolve the ability to communicate with their mutualists remains poorly understood in most pollination and fruit dispersal systems. The moss family Splachnaceae provides an excellent opportunity to explore the patterns and processes underlying plant-insect communication by exploring the properties of several key adaptations. Nearly half the species in this family of mosses use feces and other decomposing animal matter as substrates and produce brightly colored, scented fruiting bodies (sporophytes) from which flies disperse spores to new substrates. Prior studies showed that sporophyte odors and colors are diagnostic for each species, and that the fly faunas they attract are species-specific. In this research, chemical and behavioral and phylogentic approaches will be combined to investigate the evolution of insect-mediated spore dispersal in the Splachnaceae. State-of-the-art analytical methods will be employed to characterize sporophyte odors and color for species. The relationships between specific odor-color combinations and distinct fly vectors will also be explored. Behavioral studies in which odor or visual display are masked in insect dispersed taxa and added to non-insect dispersed taxa will test the effectiveness of odor and visual cues as fly attractants. The mechanisms by which key adaptations, in general, arise are important to understanding evolution and the origin of biodiversity. My research program has the potential to determine the relative importance of specific visual and olfactory signals to fly attraction and to map their evolutionary history and importance in the study system. This initiative will establish the foundations for future research, including analyses of pre-adaptation in the biosynthetic pathways responsible for odor and pigment production in mosses. Similarly, the potential importance of sporophyte odor and visual cures in niche partitioning among co-occurring species in boreal Canada and potential for geographic variation in spore dispersal strategies within taxa provides opportunities to test fundamental questions in plant reproductive ecology. Finally, the projects will support the training graduate and undergraduate students in the understudied boreal region of the country.