About the project
Bats are the most important pollinators within mammals, yet climatic changes can disrupt the spatio-temporal dynamics of nectar bat-plant interactions. This project will investigate the synchrony of bat-plant pollination interactions under current and future climate changes, and the economic consequences of decreasing ecosystem service caused by disruptions of those dynamics.
Animal pollination plays a crucial role in the provision of ecosystem service (ES) depending on the mutualism and synchrony between species. Climatic changes can modify the geographical distribution of species and temporal dynamics of biological events like pollination.
This project aims to answer the overarching questions:
- How does vegetation seasonality drive current, and possibly future, pollinating bats-plants dynamics?
- How may disruptions affect the delivery of ES?
You will have access to a unique animal movement dataset from 2015-Present of more than 4,000 tagged individuals of the pollinating migratory bat Leptonycteris yerbabuenae distributed across North America. Bat movements will be match to current and future vegetation dynamics, characterized through satellite remote sensing and environmental data. Then, you will implement the Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA) to investigate climate change impacts on the ES provisioning of bat-pollinated plants using key informant interviews and focus group discussions on villages surrounding key pollinating bat roosts. You will ask interviewees to identify, map and rank in terms of importance different types of cultivated crops, wild goods, and the drivers of change affecting the provision of these goods.
You will part of a team of leading experts on wildlife ecology and conservation. Your work will yield major advances in the knowledge on the dynamics of drylands plant communities and how those dynamics support populations of vertebrate pollinators and the economy of local communities that rely upon these plants. Results will contribute to mitigation/adaptation strategies for both the plants and their pollinators.
