Special Features

Read the latest Special Features from Functional Ecology:

Special feature: Floral scent in a whole plant context
Guest edited by Robert Raguso from Cornell University in Issue 5.  
"Scope and impact of the Special Feature
Each invited paper in this Special Feature addresses the need to explore the full range of fitness consequences of floral VOC variation, and the need to understand how plants use floral VOCs to consolidate their reproductive and defensive imperatives. The first three papers discuss the nature of signal variation in floral scent and its fitness consequences. Wright and Schiestl (2009) lead off with a behaviorally oriented paper that poses a rhetorical question: if flower color is sufficient to attract generalized pollinators (social bees) to generalized flowers, why should flowers produce scent at all? The answers they provide boil down to receiver bias and signal reliability, and have direct consequences for floral constancy and disruptive selection on floral phenotype.
In the second paper, Ashman (2009) asks a more specific question: what happens to floral scent when male and female functions are separated? Bateman’s rule predicts that when female fertility is resource limited, males should compete more vigorously for mates (via pollinator attraction) than females. Do gender dimorphic plants express such different strategies in floral VOC composition or emission rates? Furthermore, how does intersexual mimicry, in which flowers of one sex lack nectar or pollen rewards, affect the timing and composition of floral scent? Ashman uses the available data to explore such questions by contrasting hypotheses and predictions that cover multiple levels of analysis.
Next, Whitehead and Peakall (2009) build upon themes from the preceding papers by examining the impact of scent-mediated pollinator movement and gene flow on population genetic structure. In cases where floral VOCs function as specific pollinator attractants, does scent composition affect species boundaries, by either facilitating or suppressing hybridization and by attracting pollinators whose movement patterns determine levels of outcrossing? The authors’ discussion features research on sexually deceptive Ophrys and Chiloglottis orchids, for which population level variation in floral VOCs has profound consequences for gene flow across species boundaries.
The last three papers of the Special Feature describe how floral volatiles fit into a larger, whole-plant context. Having already explored how fragrance is used (or not) in deceptive flowers that mimic the scents of nectar, rotting flesh or female insects, we now read about carnivorous plants and the extent to which they use “floral” odors to trap flower-visiting insects in modified leaves. Jürgens, Al-Sayed and Suckling (2009) collected VOCs from a spectrum of active to passive trapping pitchers, sundews and fly traps, and provide proof of concept (also see DiGiusto et al. 2008) that olfactory floral mimicry is a viable mode of prey attraction for carnivorous plants. Avenues for further study include the potential for pollinator-prey conflict: do differences in the VOCs of flowers and traps allow carnivorous plants to avoid eating their pollinators?
In the fifth paper, we switch from offense to defense as Willmer et al. (2009) describe how plants prevent ants from pilfering their flowers and harassing their pollinators. Ants can be restrained by physical barriers (floral fences and moats), bribed (and distracted) by extra-floral nectar, or chemically deterred by floral VOCs such as E,E-α-farnesene, a pollen odor in flowers of the obligate myrmecophyte, Vachellia (Acacia) seyal-fistula. The authors combine chemical analysis with detailed behavioral and comparative studies, discuss the relative differences amongst co-blooming African acacias in VOC composition and ant deterrence.
The final paper confronts the issue of conflicting selective pressures between herbivores and pollinators on floral chemistry. Kessler and Halitschke’s (2009) study addresses the prediction that induced plant defenses compromise pollination, either by drawing resources away from floral display and reward, or by repelling pollinators through the systemic production of deterrent compounds in flowers. The authors used wild tomato species and controlled levels of herbivory to test these ideas, contrasting whole plant and floral VOCs with non-volatile defensive phenolics, and using visits by bumble bees to gauge the relative attractiveness of wounded vs. control plants."
Read the full introduction and all the papers on Wiley InterScience published in the October issue of Functional Ecology.

Special feature: Nutritional Ecology
Functional Ecology is pleased to announce the publication of a special feature in the latest issue of the journal, comprising eight invited peer-reviewed articles that present the latest research in Nutritional Ecology. An accompanying virtual issue brings together an additional 13 related papers published in Functional Ecology over the past two years. Read the Special Feature papers free online:

• Editorial: Nutritional ecology, functional ecology and Functional Ecology by Raubenheimer & Boggs
• Nutrition, ecology and nutritional ecology: toward an integrated framework by Raubenheimer et al.
• Ten years of experimental animal isotopic ecology by Wolf et al.
• Understanding insect life histories and senescence through a resource allocation lens by Boggs
• The microbial dimension in insect nutritional ecology by Douglas
• Nutritional toxicology of mammals: regulated intake of plant secondary compounds by Torregrossa & Dearing
• Nutrition integrates environmental responses of ungulates by Parker et al.
• Nutritional goals of wild primates by Felton et al.
• Nutritional ecology of marine herbivorous fishes: ten years on by Clements et al.

Virtual issue on Nutritional Ecology
Don't miss our accompanying Nutritional Ecology virtual issue featuring 13 related papers published in Functional Ecology over the past two years. 

Special feature: Towards a Predictive Understanding of Belowground Process Responses to Climate Change
The December 2008 issue of Functional Ecology includes a guest editorial and 7 papers on belowground process responses to climate change.  These papers highlight some of the advances being made and provide directions for future research. Read these special feature articles online here. 

Special feature:  The Evolutionary Ecology of Senescence
The June 2008 issue includes seven influential review articles on the evolutionary ecology of senescence.  Monaghan et al guest edited this special feature in which they consider the underlying causes of senescence looking at the evolutionary ecology of the ageing process summarising the principal mechanisms thought to be involved. Read these papers here.

Special feature: Sexual Selection, Physiology and Performance
This was the second of Functional Ecology's 2007 special features. Papers in this feature focus on a functional approach to sexual selection.  The 6 papers plus the introduction by Irschick et al can be accessed here.

 
Special feature: Evolution on Ecological Time-scales
Andrew Hendry, Scott Carroll and David Reznick brought together 7 papers for this special feature looking at factors that influence evolution on ecological time-scales and to assess the consequences of such evolution.  Read the papers here.

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