ID: 613 / 171

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: BIOTIC INTERACTIONS AND BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS. SESSION 1

Abstract: Biological invasions constitute natural (and intentional) experiments to assess how the changes in the environment of the native and non-native species spurs ecological end evolutionary change. Invasive plants face environments free from natural enemies of their home range and/or the absence of muatualists (fruit/seeds dispersers, lack of coevolved pollinators, microbiota, etc.). Likewise, native plants might face selection pressures exerted by different parasites, herbivores, pathogens and competitors to which they lack of effective defensive adaptations. This symposium is aimed to document the phenotypic evolutionary change brought about changes in biotic interactions during the invasion by non-native species.

Speaker 1: Montserrat Vilà Doñana Biological Station Higher Scientific Research Council (EBD-CSIC) and University of Seville, Spain montse.vila@ebd.csic.es “Does climate change influence the impact of invasive plants on crops?”

Speaker 2: Marc Johnson Departments of Biology, Evolutionary Biology, and Centre for Urban Environments University of Toronto – Mississauga Canada marc.johnson@utoronto.ca “The evolution of plant defences against herbivores in the cosmopolitan invasive plant white clover (Trifolium repens L.)”

Speaker 3: Mario Vallejo-Marin Department of Ecology and Genetics Uppsala University Sweden mario.vallejo-marin@ebc.uu.se “Buzz pollination in native and invasive plant populations”

Topics (Up to three): Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Topic 2: Ecology and Plant Communities

Topic 3: Global Change Ecology

Justification: We aim to address invasion processes where plants are involved as actors. Species invasions are considered one main driver of biodiversity loss. Competitive exclusion of native species, silent extinction by hybridization, or direct environmental disturbances are, among others, critical processes promoting this loss. Biological interactions are thought to promote evolutionary adaptive change and ecological speciation. Biological invasions offer unique opportunities of studying evolution in action, because new conditions may produce adapted phenotypes even in short time, particularly when selection pressures are strong and generation times are short, becoming paradigmatic study cases for evolutionary ecology.