U.S.-Australia Planning Visit: Plant and Ecosystem Responses to Global Change

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0624762WebsterThis award supports a planning visit to enable Dr. Michael Webster of Washington State University in Pullman to meet with Dr. Bradley Congdon at the James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland and Darryl Jones at Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland and Sarah Legge at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy in Derby, West Australia. The visit will facilitate development of a collaborative plan on the behavior and speciation of the Australian Fairy-wren.The study will involve the role of reproductive behavior in driving diversification among populations and speciation. Reproductive competition, resulting in sexual selection, is thought to be an important force in the speciation process, but most support for this key hypothesis has come from broad comparative studies. This is particularly true for birds: sexual selection is thought to play a key role in diversification and speciation in this group, yet few studies have examined geographic variation in mating signals and preferences, nor whether these produce reproductive isolation among populations. The project will examine these issues by directly examining the role of mating signals and preferences in a model system: Australian fairy-wrens (genus Malurus). The visit will allow the international team of collaborators to meet to plan specific experiments, identify study sites, and collect important preliminary data. It is also anticipated that this project will provide unique training and educational opportunities for U.S. graduate students to obtain a global research experience. It is anticipated that these collaborations between the scientists and students from each country will lead to long-term collaborations that will benefit all the institutions.