Plant Science Group: Technical Talk

Topic:    Evolutionary ecology of plants: Understanding the evolution of plant mating systems.

Speaker: Dr Francisco Encinas Viso, OCE Postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research (CANBR), CSIRO National Facilities and Collections

Place: Theatrette, ANBG

Talk summary:

Plants have a huge diversity of mating systems and life-history traits.
The evolution of this high diversity of plant mating systems is still poorly understood.
One commonly observed pattern in plant species that vary in their mating systems among populations is that the margins of their geographical range are enriched by increased selfing rates.
This has often been attributed to a lack of mates and/or pollinator limitations.
In this talk, I will explain what hypotheses explain the evolution of plant mating systems (self-incompatibility) and how we use computer modelling to investigate such ideas.