Bette Loiselle
(University of Florida Gainesville, USA)
BIO
Dr. Bette Loiselle is currently Director, Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program in the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Prior to joining the University of Florida in August 2011, Dr. Loiselle was Division Director for Environmental Biology (DEB) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2010 and 2011 and Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis from 1990 to 2010. Her research covers many areas from tropical ecology and conservation biology to applications of geographic information systems for biodiversity research and conservation. From 1997-2003, Dr. Loiselle was the Director of the International Center for Tropical Ecology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. From 2006-2008, Dr. Loiselle served as a Program Director in the Population and Evolutionary Processes (PEP) Cluster within DEB at NSF. Dr. Loiselle serves, or has served, as a member of a number of boards, including The Nature Conservancy-Missouri and the American Ornithologist Union, as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Organization for Tropical Studies, and as an Associate Editor for The American Naturalist, a premier journal in the field of ecology. Dr. Loiselle’s awards include a Fulbright Scholarship to Argentina in 2004 and a C. Brice Ratchford Memorial Fellowship Award, University of Missouri in 2005. At the University of Florida, Dr. Loiselle directs an interdisciplinary program designed to effectively contribute to conservation and development in tropical regions by crossing disciplines, linking academics to practitioners, and working in partnership with a wide range of stakeholders. The TCD Program has more than 85 current graduate students with close to 100 faculty affiliates from more than 20 departments across campus.
ABSTRACT
Ecological interactions between frugivores and fleshy-fruited plants: lessons from the past and a look to the future
Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species noted the dependence of mistletoe plants on birds for seed dissemination. Darwin used this ecological interaction as an example for his arguments on the “struggle for existence”. Here mistletoes were said to be struggling with other fruit-bearing plants “to tempt birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds rather than those of other plants”. Darwin also noted the importance of seed dispersal by animals to plant populations as these agents through their ingestion of seeds could disseminate seeds over long distances, sometimes hundreds of kilometers. Yet, among well-known plant-animal interactions, such as pollination and herbivory, studies of fruit-frugivore interactions received relatively little attention for much of the 20th century. However, in the early 1970’s, several influential papers were published by Doyle McKey, David Snow, Daniel Janzen and Joseph Connell that established an evolutionary and theoretical framework from which to investigate fruit-frugivore interactions and their consequences to plant and animal populations. The rate of publications then soared and the field attracted a whole new generation of scientists, many of whom worked in tropical ecosystems where the diversity of frugivores and fleshy-fruited plants was exceptionally rich. Over the next decades, the study of fruit-frugivore interactions has continued to develop and become more integrative. For example, research questions and approaches now integrate across the complex processes involved in seed dispersal (i.e., fruit choice, fruit removal and seed handling, seed deposition, seed survival and germination, seedling establishment, etc.). Such advances build on decades of observation and experimental work, plus technological (e.g., GIS, molecular genetics, radio-transmitters) and analytical (e.g., network analysis) developments that open new avenues of research. Today, understanding the importance of fruit-frugivore interactions to ecological functions, especially in diverse tropical environments, has generated new attention in light of current patterns of habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and projected impacts of climate change. The complexities of these networks of interacting plant and animal species provide significant challenges to predicting their response to disturbance. Here, the ecological studies of this important plant-animal mutualism are reflected upon to reveal the significant lessons from the past that have shaped the field today and the challenges of the future that may direct further studies for the decade to come.
