Synchronized flowering among individuals within a population may bring high fitness via high yield in seed set and lower inbreeding depression, by enhancing gene exchange rate and pollination efficiency. Synchronized flowering also occur among species with low relatedness in phylogeny, leading to a pulse of flower and seed production in the plant community of Southeast Asia. Several studies suggested that flowering synchronization may evolve due to disproportional benefit in pollination, avoidance of seed predation, prediction for benign environment for seedling establishment. Other studies argued that species join mass flowering due to phylogenetic constrain. Regardless of evolutionary path, signals from the environments are important triggers for synchronization among individuals and species. This talk will introduce theories and attempts to identify evolutionary cause and proximate cues for the synchronized masting phenomenon. 

 

This talk will consist of three parts:

(1) Introduction and literature review for masting phenomenon (13:30—14:30).

(2) Biological mechanism for masting phenomenon (14:45—15:45).

(3) Model construction and comparison with data (16:00—17:00).