We are thrilled to announce that our NSF collaborative proposal has been awarded! Together with the Dávalos lab at SUNY Stony Brook and the Riffell lab at UW, we will be working on the project “Chance or necessity? Adaptive vs. non adaptive evolution in plant-frugivore interactions”. We will investigate the coevolution between fruit scents and the olfactory ability and behavioral preferences of fruit-eating bats by integrating advanced tools from analytical chemistry, genomics, and behavioral ecology. Our work will focus on two ecologically important groups of tropical plants and mammals, Piper plants and Carollia bats, and will be based at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. We are currently looking for a postdoc and recruiting a Ph.D. student for this project.

Photo © Merlin Tuttle, BCI