ID: 613 / 149

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: FLORAL NECTAR: POLLINATION SYNDROMES, PRODUCTION ATTRIBUTES, REGULATION EVOLUTION. PART I

Abstract: Floral nectar is central to most relationships between plants and animal pollinators, and has been the subject of much investigation for a long time. However, much about nectar remains poorly known and understood. We know, for example, that there are correlations or pollination syndromes involving attributes of floral nectar (i.e., volume, concentration, composition) and attributes of the pollinators (e.g., taxonomic group, body size). There is also growing evidence that plants can both secrete and absorb nectar, possibly enabling them to regulate nectar attributes in their flowers and thus manipulate pollinator behaviour to their advantage. In some circumstances, floral nectar may also attract or repulse potential pollinators by virtue of its attributes. However, the relative adaptive advantage of particular nectar attributes and hence how these attributes evolve are sometimes unclear because plants may be implicitly assumed to evolve simply to benefit their pollinators or because of a lack of differentiation between arguments based on natural selection acting at the levels of individual, population and species. This symposium aims to bring together the topics of Pollination Syndromes involving Nectar, Nectar Production Attributes, Regulation of Nectar attributes and their Evolution, identify issues where our understanding is problematic, resolve these issues as much as possible, and point to the necessary nature and extent of future research re floral nectar.

Speaker 1: Ren, Zong-Xin & Pyke, Graham (China & Australia) renzongxin@mail.kib.ac.cn & Graham.Pyke@mq.edu.au “Floral nectar: cost, regulation and partner manipulation”

Speaker 2: Raguso, Rob (USA) rar229@cornell.edu “Floral signals, cues and nectar constituents”

Speaker 3: Tiedge, Kira (Netherlands) k.j.tiedge@rug.nl “Colour and chemistry: how flowers signal reward quality to pollinators”

Topics (Up to three): Ecophysiology

Topic 2: Floristics

Topic 3: Plant, Animal & Microbe Interactions

Justification: This proposed symposium is well justified for the following reasons. Firstly, floral nectar is extremely important in most plant-pollinator relationships and subject to much ongoing research. Secondly, various aspects of nectar biology that are poorly known and understood, and this realisation is resulting in new, exciting research directions. Thirdly, the topic of floral nectar is relevant to four of the 31 target topics, namely 11. Ecophysiology, 14. Floristics, 24. Plant, Animal & Microbe Interactions, and 30. Reproductive Biology, and hence should be of high general interest. Fourthly, we would anticipate publication of the presentations as a journal special issue.