Plant Animal interactions

Plant Animal interactions - Tropical rain forests are the stage for many of the world's most complex and interesting plant and animal interactions. These interactions play important roles in plant defenses, pollination and seed dispersal. Ecology and Evolution states that interactions between plants and animals have been one of the major sources of the current global biological diversity. Specifically, in the case of higher plants, their interactions with antagonistic (e.g. herbivores) and mutualistic (e.g. pollinators) animals have promoted the evolution of a broad variety of morphological, functional, reproductive and chemical traits associated with a spectacular diversification process ( > 250000 species). The study of micro and macroevolutionary processes behind such extraordinary adaptive radiation, as well as their underlying ecological and genetic mechanisms, is highly topical in Evolutionary Biology. Such view also constitutes the conceptual basis of this Research Line.