OOS 31: How Phytochemical Variation Enhances Our Understanding of Patterns and Processes from the Leaf to the Ecosystem

Session Organizer(s)

• Ken Keefover-Ring

  Depts. of Botany and Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Madison, WI, USA

Moderator(s)

• Ken Keefover-Ring

  Depts. of Botany and Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Madison, WI, USA

Volunteer(s)

• Sachinthani Karunarathne

  School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Plants produce an incredible array of compounds. They use these chemicals to mediate numerous biological interactions between the plants that make them and other organisms, such as pollinators, herbivores, and even other plants. Particular taxa of plants are often associated with specific classes of compounds and enormous variability exists among and within species and even within individual plants. This variation occurs both spatially and temporally and can be highly sensitive to abiotic and biotic factors. Resulting selection can have cascading effects on ecosystem structure and function. It is imperative to better understand the ecology and co-evolutionary drivers that are shaping the chemical landscape to gain critical insights into how systems are responding and adapting to a changing climate. While this multi-scale variation of plant chemistry has long been the focus of ecological research, recent advances in fields such as analytical chemistry, genomics, and molecular biology have led to greater understanding of the biosynthesis, mode of action, and evolution of plant chemistry. The overarching goal of the session is to highlight the latest advances in assessing plant chemical diversity and how those data can be used to unravel complex connections between organisms and across spatial and temporal scales. To this end we have invited a group of individuals at the forefront of this area of research, who work across different study systems, disciplines, and levels of biological organization with a common goal of providing contemporary insights into the mechanisms involved in these ecological interactions. Participants will present novel work at the intersection of chemical ecology, molecular biology, and ecoinformatics to highlight the need for collaborations and outline key research gaps and challenges that the community should address as we unravel these complex interactions.

Presentations:

• ON DEMAND

  Exploring secondary metabolite variation on an ancient plant clade across large environmental gradients
  

  Presenting Author: Diego Salazar Amoretti – Biological Sciences, Florida International University
• ON DEMAND

  Heritability and ontogeny of phytochemical traits in Piper sancti-felicis
  

  Presenting Author: Casey S. Philbin – Hitchcock Center for Chemical Ecology, University of Nevada, Reno
• ON DEMAND

  Intraspecific phytochemical variation in Ceanothus velutinus along an elevational gradient and the associated herbivores
  

  Presenting Author: Lora A. Richards – Hitchcock Center for Chemical Ecology, University of Nevada, Reno
• ON DEMAND

  Phenotypic variation in a Populus model system: Implications for ecological interactions across scales of age, space and time
  

  Presenting Author: Richard L. Lindroth – Dept. of Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison