Stiftelsen Oscar och Lili Lamms Minne
Du är här: Hem // 2018 
TitelSpatial mosaic of eco-evolutionary dynamics created by pollinators in fragmented landscapes
NoFO2018-0043
UniversitetStockholms Universitet
InstitutionInstitutionen för ekologi, miljö och botanik
HuvudsökandeEtsuko Nonaka
Beviljat belopp1 235 250
Sammanfattning
Habitat loss and fragmentation (hereafter habitat fragmentation to mean both) are among the five leading causes of loss of biodiversity worldwide. Land use change and climatic shifts are the major driving factors. Habitat fragmentation has altered landscape structure (composition and configuration of habitat patches) of many landscapes. Landscape structure plays an important role in organizing biological diversity in landscapes. It mediates evolutionary processes, namely selection, gene flow, and genetic drift, as well as ecological processes including population dynamics and species interactions. Organisms interact with landscape structure to determine their movement paths. As a result, such interactions can determine functional connectivity, the degree at which organisms connect populations and habitat elements in the landscape by movement and gene flow. Functional connectivity of a landscape is crucial for determining spatial population structure (size and locations of local populations) and spatial genetic structure (amounts and types of standing genetic variation to respond to environmental changes). Because genetic variation is necessary for a population to adapt to environmental and landscape changes, spatial genetic structure can determine the evolutionary potential of the population. Despite the potential for providing a mechanistic understanding of functional connectivity of landscapes, only a few studies considered movement rules and gene flow together at the landscape scale. The goal of this project is to theoretically and mechanistically study how movement behavior of organisms interacts with landscape structure to shape gene flow and spatial genetic structure, and as a result, the evolutionary potential of spatially structured populations. I will utilize both molecular analysis and spatial modeling approaches to achieve this goal. This project will motivate this complex theoretical investigation by using well-studied plant-pollinator interactions in the Stora Alvaret in Öland. Pollinators are often negatively impacted by land use change and habitat fragmentation. Studies suggest complex interactions between the behavior of foraging pollinators and landscape structure. Pollinator availability influences plant reproductive success and plant mating patterns. I will examine how pollinators with different movement rules move and pollinate flowers in landscapes with different spatial habitat structure. The knowledge gained from this project will provide solid theoretical foundations for conservation and restoration of biodiversity at landscape scales to enhance functional connectivity and robustness of populations to land use and environmental changes. I will link theory and empirical data taken from the Alvaret to maximize the applicability of theoretical findings to conservation and also the impact of the research outcomes. The entire project is to take 2 years of postdoc work. Module 1 will be conducted from 2019-04-01 to 2020-03-31. This application seeks funds for genotyping plant samples in Module 1, which will provide crucial genetic data to conduct pollen flow analysis at the landscape scale. This will enable me to infer pollinator movement that is otherwise difficult to study logistically because pollinators are small.