Simone Caroline Cappellari, SI Pre-Doctoral Fellow
|
Research Interests:
My broad research interests are ecological and evolutionary aspects of mutualistic interactions, especially those involving plants and their pollinators. My research combines approaches in pollination ecology, plant reproduction, animal behavior, evolutionary biology, and chemical ecology for the study of plant-pollinator interactions at species and community levels.
Since my undergraduate studies, I have been fascinated by tropical pollination systems involving the production of alternative types of floral rewards (e.g., floral oils, perfumes, resins, etc.) which tend to be collected by bees that show some degree of specialization - either behaviorally, morphologically, or both - in the way they interact with plants. Specialized pollination systems offer great opportunities to study levels of plant-animal inter-dependency, including measurements of selective pressures imposed by pollinators on plant traits and effects of the disassociation between specialized partners at the species level as well as the effects that such specialized interactions have on the overall structure of plant-pollinator communities.
For my doctoral dissertation, I chose to pursue aspects of the evolutionary ecology of specialized pollination systems at the species and community levels. My project includes the study of a plant-pollinator community in the Brazilian Cerrado which is especially rich in species of Malpighiaceae, a plant family in which most species have oil producing flowers that attract oil-collecting bees (Apidae: Centridini, Tapinotaspidini, and Tetrapediini) as pollinators. I use field observations and network theory to determine how these specialized interactions shape the structure of the community in comparison to other systems from tropical and temperate regions that lack interactions at this level of specialization. I am especially interested in determining if and how interactions such as the oil flower-oil-collecting bee mutualism may affect stability and persistence of the tropical communities in which they are abundant (e.g., the Cerrados of South America). I am also working on the pollinator partitioning mechanisms, including chemical ecology of floral rewards, between sympatric species of Malpighiaceae from the same region.
Publications:
Cappellari, S. C. and B. Harter-Marques (2010). First report of scent collection by male orchid bees (Apidae: Euglossini) from terrestrial mushrooms in southern Brazil. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 83: 264-266.
Cappellari, S. C., B. Harter-Marques, P. Aumeier, W. Engels (2009). Mecardonia tenella (Plantaginaceae) attracts oil-, perfume-, and pollen-gathering bees in Southern Brazil. Biotropica 41: 721-729.
Rabeling, C., J. L. Neto, S. C. Cappellari, I. Santos, U. G. Mueller, M. Bacci Jr. (2009). Thelytokous parthenogenesis in the fungus-gardening ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). PloS One 4(8): e6781.
Cappellari, S. C., P. Aumeier, B. Harter-Marques, W. Engels (2003). Male orchid bees collect from oil-secreting flowers in southern Brazil. Apidologie 34: 486-487 (Supplement).
Cappellari, S. C., B. Harter, A. Zillikens, J. Steiner, W. Engels (2002). Comparison of orchid bee diversity in fragments of the Araucaria- and Atlantic-rainforests of Southern Brazil. Apidologie 33: 517-518 (Supplement).
Thesis:
Cappellari, S. C. (2003). Flowers of Mecardonia tenella (Scrophulariaceae) as alternative scent sources for male orchid bees (Euglossini: Euglossa mandibularis) in the Araucaria forest of southern Brazil. Master Thesis. Universität Tübingen, Germany.
Book Chapter:
Cappellari, S. C. (2011). Plant-Pollinator Interactions and their Relevance for Conservation of the Cerrado Vegetation in the Reserva Ecológica of IBGE. In: RECOR: Biodiversity, Anthropomorphic Pressures and Environmental Management; Ed. Bráulio Dias. Brazilian Ministry of Environment Publishing, Brasília, Brazil. In press.
Popular Science Article:
Cappellari, S. C. 2009. On the sustenaible use of a natural, renewable resource: the Pequi fruit. Aprenda com a Natureza 2: 2.
[ TOP ]