Floral Evolution: what is the impact of human-induced Pollinator Decline? – EvoPoD

While the ecological consequences of the ongoing pollinator crisis have recenty received considerable attention, the evolutionary implications of this situation remain poorly appreciated and are more challenging to predict. Focusing on a plant species with separate sexes, the EvoPoD project aims at (i) experimentally characterizing how pollinator decline impacts the strength of selection on male and female floral traits, (ii) examining whether the evolutionary consequences are already visible across an anthropogenic gradient and (iii) exploring whether male-female differences in floral phenotype, which potentially constitute a stable evolutionary strategy under optimal pollinator abundances, become an evolutionary dead-end in deteriorated conditions. The ambition is to integrate a variety of approaches (pollination biology, chemical ecology, population genetics) to create a textbook example of the impact of human-driven pollinator decline on the dynamics of selection on floral traits.