Dr Cristina Garcia, Royal Holloway University of London

The ecological and evolutionary consequences of shifting the dispersal ability of plants across spatial and temporal scales 

The chances of plants to persist in a changing world strongly depends on their ability to disperse their propagules, and yet we lack reliable estimates of how far and how frequent plants disperse their seeds and pollen grains - and the genes they encapsulate. This seriously hampers our ability to forecast whether plant populations will persist in an increasingly defaunated and warmer world, where the probability to reach suitable sites to germinate decreases as frugivores and pollinators decline and climate changes.

This seminar aims to: 1) explain the ecological and evolutionary importance of dispersal in plants and the major advances we made over the latest decades; 2) based on my previous work, demonstrate that biodiversity loss, fragmentation, and climate change shift the ability of plants to disperse and by doing so, they impact their demographic and evolutionary trends; and 3) discuss future research lines and collaborations.

This seminar will be taking place in Bourne Lecture Theatre 1, we hope to see many of you there.