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 Dr. Lynn Adler, Associate Professor of Entomology in the Department of Plant, Soil & Insect Sciences, was invited to give one of two keynote presentations at the
23rd Annual Meeting of the Scandinavian Association for Pollination Ecologists (SCAPE). The SCAPE 2009 symposium was held October 23rd-25th at the Archipelago Research Institute of the University of Turku, located on the island of Seili in Finland.
 Dr. Adler's keynote presentation, "Sex and Food: The Role of Flowers for Pollinators and Herbivores" focused on how plants attract animals that will benefit them, and, at the same time, deter ones that could harm them.
Abstract:
"Plant-animal interactions are thought to have played a key role in the diversification of angiosperms, but plant-pollinator and plant-herbivore interactions have historically been studied independently. Flowers act as signals for mutualist pollinators, but such cues may also be used by a variety of floral antagonists including nectar robbers, florivores, and seed predators. Furthermore, many insects function as pollinating adults but have herbivorous larvae, providing the potential for mutualist interactions to have negative consequences if pollinators oviposit their offspring on preferred plants. The role of floral traits in determining the outcome of this interaction, ranging from pollination to herbivory, is largely unexplored outside of a few highly specialized systems. Furthermore, if traits such as defensive chemicals are correlated in leaves and floral tissue, it may be difficult for plants to evolve optimal solutions to conflicting selection pressures for attractive flowers and defended leaves. Here I present data from several systems examining the extent to which plants encounter conflicting tradeoffs between attracting pollinators while deterring herbivores, the role of plant traits in determining the outcome of interactions that range from pollination to herbivory, and the potential for conflicting selection pressure due to correlated traits across tissues. Examining the broad context in which traits evolve should provide a greater understanding of the ecology and evolution of plant attractive and resistance traits."
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