NSERC Post-doctoral Fellow
Williams Lab
Department of Entomology
University of California, Davis
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA
95616
jforrest [at] ucdavis.edu
[projects] [past research] [publications] [links]
|
Jessica
Forrest NSERC Post-doctoral Fellow Williams Lab Department of Entomology University of California, Davis One Shields Ave. Davis, CA 95616 jforrest [at] ucdavis.edu [projects] [past research] [publications] [links] |
| Research
overview I am an ecologist with a particular interest in the interplay between species interactions (especially pollination) and environmental change. How has past environmental variability influenced the plant-pollinator relationships we see today, and how might these relationships be affected by more rapid future changes? A lot of my work deals with biological aspects of timing (e.g., phenology, synchrony, life history). |
| Projects 1. Climate-change effects on plants and pollinators If species differ in the types of cues they use to regulate the seasonal timing of their life cycles (phenology), formerly interacting species might shift phenology independently as the planet warms. However, there have been few datasets with which to evaluate either the likelihood of temporal mismatch between insects and plants, or the possible consequences of such mismatch for the populations in question. Much of my research aims to fill these gaps. I have been studying cavity-nesting solitary bees in subalpine meadows to determine how well timing of bee emergence is correlated with flowering phenology and local air temperatures. My results (2) suggest that both plant and insect phenology are regulated primarily by temperature (degree-day accumulation), although in slightly different ways. This similarity makes asynchrony between plants and pollinators relatively unlikely, at least in these habitats. |
 |
 Male Megachile on unopened Erigeron head |
2. Life-history strategies
of solitary bees Most bees and plants in subalpine habitats are generalists, a fact that minimizes the risk that disruption to a particular pairwise interaction will result in demographic catastrophe for either species. Several solitary bee species also display what appears to be a bet-hedging life-history strategy, with cohort emergence split among two or more years--another trait that should confer resilience to environmental variation. I am interested in better understanding the distribution (geographic, ecological, phylogenetic) and adaptive value of such life-history traits, with the goal of better predicting which taxa and habitats will be most vulnerable to future environmental change. |
| 3. Flowering phenology
and
the adaptive value
of floral traits With Jane Ogilvie (University of Toronto), I am trying to understand the role of pollinator phenology--and seasonally varying pollinator-mediated selection--in maintaining style-length variation in a species of Mertensia (Boraginaceae) (see 1). 4. Constraints on the evolution of phenology Evolutionary change in phenology might allow organisms to adapt to changing climate, but evolution is subject to certain constraints. I'm interested in how some peculiarities of bee behaviour (e.g., 9) and flowering patterns can restrict adaptive change in flowering phenology. |
A Mertensia
fusiformis plant with
especially
long
styles |
| 5.
Co-flowering
patterns in
subalpine meadows Climate change has the potential to reorganize flowering plant communities, with implications both for the plants themselves and for the consumers that depend on floral resources. I (and others) have used a unique long-term dataset on flowering phenology (belonging to David Inouye, University of Maryland), to study how year-to-year variation in timing of snowmelt over the last 35 years has affected community-scale flowering patterns at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (see 3, 6). |
| Past
research I did my Ph.D. in James Thomson's lab at the University of Toronto. For my Master's, I worked with Shelley Arnott at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario) on zooplankton community ecology (11-12). During my B.Sc. at McGill University, I worked on Diptera biodiversity with Terry Wheeler, and described some new species of tiny flies from the Galápagos (13-15). |
Publications
|
| Links Phenology-related:
|
 |