A joint seminar of the section Systematics, Biodiversity & Evolution of Plants, the Botanische Staatssammlung München and the Botanical Garden München-Nymphenburg
When? Wednesdays at 1:15pm (during the semester, unless specified otherwise).
Where? Big Lecure Hall Botanical Institute, Menzinger Str. 67, 80638 München.
! Tuesday, extra seminar
Kate Samra, New York Botanical Garden, New York, U.S.A.
Leaf domatia: an understudied but integral player in global plant-invertebrate ecology
Plant and invertebrate populations are declining rapidly. Due to the many and complex ecological relationships between plants and invertebrates (i.e., pollination, dispersal, and herbivory), their declines are often interconnected. Leaf domatia, small structures that house invertebrates, represent an understudied yet common, plant-invertebrate relationship. The family Melastomaceae includes hundreds of species with leaf domatia and exhibits an impressive morphological diversity of these domatia. However, the lack of a family-wide survey of leaf domatia, as well as a universal morphological classification of domatia, has limited meaningful study of their ecology and evolution. Almost nothing is known about which invertebrates inhabit leaf domatia, how the plants may benefit from the presence of invertebrates, or how tightly specialized these relationships are. In this talk, I illustrate the process of classifying domatia diversity in Melastomaceae, discuss the limitations of such a classification, outline plans for further research on these unique structures, and summarize why this is relevant to the conservation of both plants and invertebrates.
Host: Dr. Luo Che