Landscape constraints on plant functional connectivity as a multi-scale process

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In the face of changing global climate and land use, plants need to be able to move across fragmented landscapes to maintain genetic diversity and to shift their ranges. The movement of plants and their genes across a landscape (plant functional connectivity) happens largely through pollination and seed dispersal. Many plants rely on multiple animal vectors to transport pollen and seeds, and these vectors may respond to the landscape in different ways. Despite this inherent complexity, plant functional connectivity is often modeled as a single spatial process, which may fail to explain e.g. rare long-distance dispersal events. As each animal vector responds to the landscape in a species-specific and scale-dependent way, the consequences of landscape change for plant functional connectivity, and ultimately plant population viability, will depend on the degree to which different vectors show synchronized (potentially accelerating the loss of plant functional connectivity) or divergent responses (potentially buffering plant functional connectivity). The planned research aims to characterize plant functional connectivity as the joint effect of multiple dispersal processes at multiple spatial scales.This research program will train four Ph.D. students and 21 undergraduate students (through Undergraduate Summer Research Assistantships, B.Sc. theses, Research Opportunity Program) in my spatial ecology and landscape genetics lab. Focusing on two study systems, one in Canada and one in Costa Rica, we will use a combination of ecological and molecular genetic approaches. Students will be trained to combine field experiments, observational studies and computer simulation experiments to assess the net effects of landscape change on plant functional connectivity through modifying the behavior of pollinators and seed dispersers. We will push the boundaries of landscape genetics beyond typical observational studies of single species by conducting a landscape-scale gene flow experiment and addressing trophic interactions. Beyond the five-year program, the demographic-genetic model developed and validated here will provide an ideal opportunity for testing eco-evolutionary theory in the context of interacting species in changing landscapes. Developing a framework for understanding how the effects of global change cascade through ecosystems by altering biotic interactions, such as animal-mediated pollination and seed dispersal, is important for managing and maintaining biodiversity in today's rapidly changing landscapes.