Home Research Teaching CV Inouye lab Underwood lab FSU Biology	Research
	Flowering plants must attract pollinators and avoid herbivores, and plastic traits can help optimize interactions with insect foragers. However, if herbivores and pollinators respond similarly to plant traits, plants might be limited in their ability to attract pollinators and avoid herbivores. At the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, I used the perennial flowering herb Chamerion angustifolium (fireweed) and its insect pollinators and herbivores to quantify within and among year relationships among foragers and plant traits, asking how herbivores and pollinators respond to changes in plant phenotype, and how herbivore damage and pollination affect allocation to flowering and growth. Many plants reproduce both sexually and asexually, but herbivore or pollination environment can influence plant mode of reproduction. The aquatic plant Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth) is a successful invader in north Florida and in many regions of the world in part due to rapid asexual reproduction. I mimicked adult and larval specialist weevil (Neochetina eichhorniae and N. bruchi) damage and hand pollinated water hyacinth to investigate plant growth, sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction, and resistance to herbivores in response to damage type and pollination success. Herbivory and pollination can be highly variable in space and time, and that variability itself can influence the evolution of plant traits. I used a simulation model to explore how variability in herbivory and pollination both within and across years interacts with pattern of allocation to growth and reproduction to affect plant fitness.