Ecology Colloquium Series - Mechanisms of Fruit Choice in Birds

November 2, 2016 @ 01:20 pm to 02:10 pm

Ben Vizzachero, Penn State

301D Life Sciences

Event Website

Preliminary data suggests that avian frugivory is proportionally high on fruits that are rare both spatially and temporally, which could result in a previously undescribed stabilizing mechanisms of species coexistence. As the lab of Tomas Carlo embarks on an NSF-funded project to explore this mechanism, I will develop a series of field experiments using artificial fruit arrays to gauge how a fruit's perceived abundance in the landscape effects the interest of avian frugivores at a community level.

Contact

Dr. David Eissenstat
dme9@psu.edu