Conclusions and videos
Open Room 1. Pollination/Pollinator Efficiency (PE)
Conclusions
Pollination efficiency is usually defined as the relative ability of pollinators to contribute to pollen transfer during its visits to flowers. Therefore, pollination efficiency could be used in evaluation of the effect of individual pollinators on the plant sexual reproduction and following evolution. However, both quantitative and qualitative components of pollination efficiency have to be taken into account. While examination of quantitative components is quite straightforward, estimates of the qualitative component remain problematic and need further investigation. Nevertheless, it is advisable to use a bidimensional projection of both components into an efficiency landscape. Further dimensions, such as floral complexity, should also be considered.
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Open Room 2 . Is natural variation in floral traits adaptive?
Conclusions
- Floral trait variation can be discrete or continuous. Some traits are defined as continuous, other traits are either.
- We lack information regarding the extent of discrete versus continuous variation, as well as the fraction of species lacking variation.
- Oftentimes no selection is detected, despite apparent trait variation.
- Measuring variation should be improved, and take into account (also) pollinators' point of view and background context.
- Selection measured through female fitness alone is insufficient; male function may hide important information.
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Open Room 3. Effects of habitat fragmentation on pollination
Conclusions
- The study of the effects of habitat fragmentation on pollination interactions is a very complex issue with multiple challenges. Effects of fragmentation observed in other organisms, like large mammals, are difficult to find in pollination interactions, probably due to methodological and context dependent limitations. There is a high intrinsic complexity mostly related to the many correlated features associated with this landscape process and to the number of factors that influence pollination interactions.
- To assess the mobility of insect pollinators between habitat patches and the permeability of the surrounding matrix is crucial but challenging. We must think big to go further. Large-scale studies using similar protocols and experimental approaches might help to understand general patterns.
- Habitat quality in the landscape matrix should be quantified to be included in the studies of habitat fragmentation. Also, take advantage of other disciplines (e. g. combining aerial images and computer assisted identification of vegetation), and to assess the usefulness of citizen science to carry out broader and more ambitious studies.
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Open Room 4 . Implications of plant phenotypic plasticity for flower-pollinator interactions
Conclusions
- There is clear increased recent interest in looking at plastic variation in floral traits induced by a variety of environmental factors
- Many carefully designed studies show the consequences of floral plastic variation for pollination interactions, that is, of plasticity impacting the ecology of flowers and pollinators
- The next step, showing if plasticity can influence evolution is much more challenging but clearly in the research agenda
- All studies presented today and many in the literature focus on Brassicacae. We discussed how the family has advantages for the study of plasticity (well-studied species as well as model systems with excellent genetic resources, rapid growth) but also presenting high levels of plasticity in nature combined with highly generalised interactions
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Open Room 5 . How can we include floral traits in our estimates of diet flexibility? Challenges and recent advances
Conclusions
- The most relevant floral traits are plant height, reflectance, tube length, corolla size, corolla symmetry, and "compactness". Many floral traits are missing in the data bases available, especially pollinator traits.
- It is important to establish which traits are useful to include in the assessment of diet flexibility (those that influence diet selection) as well as the study scale.
- Traits selected to be included in the models of plant-pollinator relationships will depend on what is available and on interspecific relationships, such as competition. Intraspecific variability in traits can be important for the diet flexibility.
Diet flexibility is, probably, flexible in itself, in the sense of being context-dependent.
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Open Room 6 . Towards a conceptual frame to study floral form and function in pollination
Conclusions
Participants agreed that floral traits have different functions, from attraction to fit and rewards, although people use different approaches in their pollination studies to study the function of traits (planning what particular traits to measure vs. measure everything and then find associations between traits and pollinator's response variables). It was debated the difference between performance, reproductive success, and fitness. In general, using conceptual models based on how traits work is useful to establish functional relationships in pollination, and ithelps to plan studies to infer how pollinators select on floral forms.
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Open Room 7 . How can we create healthy and successful relationships between mentees and mentors?
Conclusions
- The relationship between student (PhD and Master) and supervisor is of an asymmetric nature. Failure to make it work generally impacts more on the career development of the student than the supervisor. It is, therefore, crucial to creating effective ways of communication between students and supervisors early in the relationship, and having a mutual understanding of expectations. This seems obvious but it is not always understood.
- The increasing literature about the stress that students experience makes it urgent the creation of mechanisms to assess the nature of the relationship between students and supervisors (from an institutional perspective). But Universities seem unaware of the importance of the nature of the relationship between student-supervisors given the lack of effective mechanisms of control.
- In general, attendees found useful these discussions and agree that it would be healthy to keep sessions like this in the future, but that is entirely the decision of Ecoflor organizers.
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Open Room 8 . The role of antagonists in floral evolution
Conclusions
- Accounting for 100% florivory mostly by vertebrates is difficult and may have been overlooked, but hopefully this session leads to an improvement in ways of assessing this.
- Antagonists are really diverse (phylogenetically and functionally) and the talks showed they are being studied through various approaches (meta-analysis, community ecology, evolutionary biology, experimental manipulations) all towards showing the effects of antagonist on fitness, which is key to answer how antagonists shape floral evolution.
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