EEB Tuesday Seminar Series - A holistic framework to assess plants, pollinators, and plant-pollinator interactions given novel herbicide exposure

Description: Worldwide pollinator declines are a growing concern amid the scientific community and the public at large. While modern agricultural practices have been identified as a major factor contributing to the pollinator crisis, most of the research on this topic has focused on the effects of insecticide use on pollinators. In contrast, far less effort has been invested in trying to understand the possible downstream effects of herbicide use on pollinators via their effects on the plants upon which pollinators rely for floral resources. This oversight is especially alarming because herbicides surpass insecticides as the most highly-used class of pesticide in the world, and instances of pollution from newly-adopted herbicides, namely synthetic auxin (“auxinic”) herbicides, are rising. Moreover, my PhD work has shown that low dose exposures to auxinic herbicides can disrupt the growth and flowering of plant species commonly found in agroecosystems and the root mutualism between legumes and nitrogen-fixing rhizobial bacteria. Yet, the effects on plant-pollinator mutualisms in field-realistic scenarios are just beginning to be understood. In this seminar, I will present the main findings from my dissertation as well as preliminary results from my ongoing postdoctoral project, which aims to assess the effects of novel auxinic herbicide exposure on plants, pollinators, and plant-pollinator interactions. In doing so, we apply a holistic framework by investigating the impact of other relevant biotic factors present in agroecosystems (e.g. herbivores and soil microbes) that might also be important for mediating the consequences of herbicide exposure for plants and pollinators.