Proposed Symposium Title: KIN DISCRIMINATION AND KIN SELECTION IN PLANTS
Abstract: Social organizations are considered one of the major transitions in the evolution of life. Despite that social complexity has evolved at different times and in different lineages of the tree of life, plant social behaviours have been largely ignored. A plant’s lack of mobility could lead to the wrong impression that they are passive subjects in their behaviours. The latest findings show the opposite and suggest that an astonishing variety of mechanisms allow plants to sense their close environments, including the presence of conspecifics and even the relatedness level of their neighbours. Moreover, because such organisms often lack mobility at key stages of their life cycle, they tend to occur in structured populations and have closely related neighbours. A growing number of plant studies reveal the likely action of kin selection on trait evolution in such structured populations, often in systems that present ideal models to test broad hypotheses. This symposium will showcase a diversity of contexts in which social interactions may play a key role in plant evolution. Specifically, it aims to: (1) illustrate the effect of social environments on fitness and trait evolution across different species; and (2) stimulate discussion among theoretical and empirical researchers from different scientific communities and backgrounds.
Therefore, this symposium will showcase a diversity of new empirical advances in plant social interactions from distant fields as plant physiology, ecology, or genetics. It will also highlight new theoretical research on social plant evolution, from which we hope to promote discussion between theoreticians and empiricists to identify new research paths. We, thus, expect this symposium will be attractive to a broad audience of IBC participants given its multidisciplinary nature and the novelty of its main topic.
Speaker 1: Bodil Ehlers – Europe
Department of Ecoscience.; C.F. Møllers Allé 4 building 1120, 319, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark;
boe@ecos.au.dk
Tentative talk: “Inclusive fitness in plants”
Speaker 2: Ryosuke Iritani - Asia
RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS), Saitama, Japan
lambtani@gmail.com
Tentative talk: “Gametophytic competition games among relatives: When does spatial structure select for facilitativeness or competitiveness in pollination?”
Speaker 3: Richard Karban – America
Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA
Tentative talk: “Consistent individual variation in plant communication: do plants have personalities?”
Topics (Up to three): Reproductive Biology
Topic 2: Population Genetics
Topic 3: Ecology and Plant Communities
Justification: This symposium will bring together plant scientists coming from different fields interested in how social evolution and specialty kin selection can shape plant traits and population genetics. For that, we have proposed three highly experienced speakers with strong experience in this field. These three speakers account for geographical (three continents), gender and career stage diversity.
As kin selection will affect population genetics and trait evolution, this symposium will bring together several proposed topics in the IBC. Specially, this symposium has important implications on the following topics: Reproductive biology, Population genetics and Ecology and Plant communities.
