EEB Tuesday Seminar Series - Ecological opportunity through Deep Time: Looking through the lens of insects

Seminar Summary - Ecological opportunity is often invoked to explain major evolutionary radiations, but how opportunities arise, are exploited, and ultimately become constrained remains less clear. Using insects as a lens, I explore these processes across scales: from how the transition from gymnosperm- to angiosperm-dominated ecosystems reorganized insect diversification, to how generalist interactions preceded specialization in Hymenoptera; how deep evolutionary history structures global bee biogeography; and how phylogeny and ecology shape insect elemental stoichiometry. Finally, I use the fossil history of ants to ask how competition, facilitation, and diversity dependence allow biodiversity itself to reshape future evolutionary opportunities. Together, these studies view ecological opportunity not as a single event, but as a dynamic process that is continually created, filtered, and reconstructed through deep time.