岩崎研公開ラボセミナー
Ferns on islands: Community assembly, comparative ecophysiology, and biogeography of tropical Pacific pteridophytes
新田 ジョエル 博士（スミソニアン国立自然史博物館）
2019年10月29日(火) 15:00- 理学部3号館 310号室
Ferns are commonly regarded as shady understory herbs, but this depiction belies a remarkable diversity of ecological strategies and a complex evolutionary history. In addition to the familiar terrestrial ferns, there are species that grow on other plants (epiphytes), on rocks, and in water, occupying habitats from desert to tropical forest. Ferns also have an unusual lifecycle, which alternates between two vastly different, free-living stages: the larger, diploid sporophyte and the tiny, haploid gametophyte. Very little is known about the ecology of fern gametophytes, or how this unique lifecycle has impacted fern diversification.
The islands of the tropical Pacific are an ideal place to study the diverse ecological strategies of ferns because of their extreme isolation and rich taxonomic diversity. In this seminar, I will present my research on the ecology and evolution of ferns in this area in three parts: (1) I investigate differences in phylogenetic community structure between fern sporophytes and gametophytes along an elevational gradient on the islands of Moorea and Tahiti, French Polynesia; (2) I combine comparative phylogenetic methods and community ecology to understand the evolution of epiphytic growth in ferns; (3) I present ongoing work to analyze the biogeographic history of ferns in the tropical Pacific in a global context.
