PARENT SESSION
Oral Session # 48: Mutualism - Parasitism I: Plants; Modeling.
Presiding: K Jayachandran
Wednesday, August 6. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, SITCC Meeting Room 203.
Phenological analysis of flowering and fruiting in Hesperoyucca whipplei.
Udovic, Daniel*,1, 1 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
ABSTRACT- Detailed tracking of the timing and spatial patterning of flowering and fruiting in populations of Hesperoyucca whipplei provides a framework for analyzing the effects of major selective agents on the evolution of the plant's reproductive strategy and the maintenance of highly specialized interactions with its mutualist pollinators (Tegeticula maculata) and with florivorous sap beetles (Anthoneus agavensis). In this presentation, I will (1) describe a method for visualizing the fates of individual flowers as a function of their position on inflorescences, (2) describe how such positional information can be used to develop models reconstructing a population's flowering phenology, and (3) apply this approach to test the hypothesis that the plant's flowering phenology can act as a buffer against within-season variability in pollinator abundance and overexploitation by sap beetles.
Key words: pollination biology, floral display, mutualism, flowering phenology