Dissertation Research: Consequences of Habitat Fragmentation for Plant-Pollinator Interactions

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AbstractEcological processes are key to global efforts to maintain biological diversity. Pollination is an essential ecological process, but widespread habitat fragmentation is disrupting native plant-pollinator interactions worldwide and threatens long-term conservation of native communities. Habitat fragmentation reduces populations, and recent studies have revealed a positive correlation between population size and plant reproductive success. The major challenge is to understand the mechanisms underlying this correlation. In the proposed work, three possible causes of the above correlation will be examined: 1) reduced pollinator attraction could lower reproductive success in fragments, 2) lower pollinator diversity in fragments may increase pollinator limitation, and 3) smaller population sizes may result in greater inbreeding (and concomitant inbreeding depression). These mechanisms will explored for two species, Geranium viscosissimum and Asclepias speciosa, using both observational and experimental approaches.