| Notes |
In the same way that the environment varies today, strong disturbances as glacial periods or tectonic events have occurred in the past. Studies in the field of bio- and phylogeography have largely demonstrated that species reacted to these variations, but how did interactions respond to such events? Indeed, in situations of strong environmental variation, organisms involved in specialized and obligate interactions can be expected to respond in a concerted manner, since the interacting species would need each other to survive. It is possible to test this idea through an analysis of the phylogeography and the timing of past demographic events experienced by the interacting organisms. On this, the field of model-based comparative phylogeography provides an ideal tool for answering this question, and it is such an approach that I am applying in this aspect of my research.
We use phylogenetic, phylogeographic, and species distribution models to understand the spatial histories of plants and their pollinators, and identify how these organisms react to strong environmental variation.
Although we work on several specialized interactions, our main focus today is the one between the genus Calceolaria and its oil-collecting pollinators to study this type of questions. |
