Next Week in EvoS: Kari Segraves on Antagonism and Mutualism

The EvoS seminar series resumes next Monday, October 25, with a 5:00 PM talk in LH-2 by Kari Segraves of Syracuse University. The seminar is titled Untangling the entangled bank: direct and indirect effects of antagonism on mutualism. Here’s the abstract and a poster:

Mutualisms are interspecific interactions where both species benefit from participating in the association, and are thought to be important in the promotion and maintenance of biodiversity. Although we are now learning a lot about the evolutionary ecology of mutualism, much of our knowledge is based on pairwise interactions between mutualists. For instance, many studies assume that the traits involved in a mutualism are shaped by the mutualist species alone, yet we know that mutualisms do not occur in isolation of other species in the community. For each pairwise mutualism, there is a web of interacting species that either directly or indirectly affects one or both members of the mutualism. Using the yucca-yucca moth mutualism as an example, I will present evidence that suggests the local community plays a role in constraining the evolution of mutualistic traits.

Posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 in Events/News by EvoS.