Understanding the Geographical and Community Context of Mutualism Dynamics: Fig-Pollinator-Parasite Interactions in the Sonoran Desert

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Mutualisms - associations between different species in which both benefit - are profoundly important in nature. To date, however, our understanding of mutualisms has suffered from a lack of appropriate geographical and ecological context, a context that must be considered to fully understand how and why mutualisms exist. This project investigates a mutualism that underlies much of our food production and that is fundamental to life on earth: the interaction between flowering plants and their insect pollinators. It focuses on the Sonoran Desert rock fig and its pollinator, a species of fig wasp. This pollination mutualism will be studied in many different places, some of which have parasites of the wasps and some that do not. Theory predicts that where fig population size is small, as is typically the case with rock figs, reliance on a single species of short-lived pollinator leads to a high risk of pollinator extinction and eventual collapse of the mutualism. This project will test whether figs flowering at different times reduce this risk. Further, it will explore whether any such changes in the timing of flowering carry unexpected costs to the fig plants.The broader impacts of this study go beyond the fig-fig wasp system to include insights into how environmental factors influence where and when mutualisms occur. Further, the results will aid in understanding how climate change may affect pollination in small populations of plants that have specialized pollinators. Educational impacts include undergraduate education and training via the development of two International Biology courses to engage undergraduates in field research and cultural experiences, and via opportunities for hands-on research experiences in a collaborative, laboratory environment.