U.S.-France Cooperative Research: Responses of the Fig- Pollinator Mutualism to Environmental Constraints

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This three-year award supports U.S.-France cooperative research in ecology between Doyle B. McKey, University of Miami, and Finn Kjellberg, at the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Ecology, Montpellier, France. The objective is to study interactions in one of the classic cases of insect-plant coevolution: figs and pollinating wasps. For fig/wasp mutualism to persist, the pollinator wasps require flowering trees year-round as in tropical environments. The investigators address fig/wasp mutualism in potentially destabilizing seasonal environments as in more northern, subtropical climes found in Florida and mediterranean France. They will conduct parallel experiments to characterize wasp response to phenology, receptivity of individual figs and wasp behavior and chemical attraction to figs. The collaborative arrangements enable the investigators to pool complementary expertise and obtain comparable results. Both Miami and Montpellier are ideal locations to investigate the responses of fig/wasp mutualism to seasonal constraints. Because fig/wasp mutualism is a model system for studying many questions about co-evolution, the results from this study will make a major contribution to co-evolutionary studies in general.