Laura Carolina Leal de Sousa

• XXVII Simpósio de Mirmecologia: An international meeting, AR.BR

• Abstract

  The evolution of mutualistic interactions depends on stabilizing mechanisms that reduce the chance that individuals will interact with cheating partners (i.e. individuals that benefit from partners providing none or little benefits in return). Although some stabilizing mechanisms have being reported for different kinds of obligated mutualisms, little is known about how facultative mutuali…

  Competition-based screening of partners as a stabilizing mechanism in ant-plant facultative mutualisms, AP.R

• Abstract

  Mutualisms are evolutionarily non-stable interactions due to the high propensity of mutualists to be exploited for individuals that benefit from the interaction, providing little or no benefit in return. Exploiters of pollination mutualisms, for instance, consume flower's pollen and nectar, but do not pollinate the visited flowers. Therefore, plants pollinated by animals can be harmed by …

  The cost of partnership between plants and floral visitors: factors that regulate exploitation in pollination systems, BP.DR

• Abstract

  Plants secrete extrafloral nectar as an indirect defense against herbivores. One of the main factors modulating the costs related to the production of this nectar is the sunlight. The photosynthesis provides both the energy for the production of extrafloral nectaries and the carbohydrates alocated for the secretion of extraforal nectar. We know that the total photosynthetic rate of the pl…

  How does variation in the active photosynthetic area affect the secretion of extrafloral nectar in Chamaecrista sp.?, BP.IC
• Extrafloral nectar characterization of different species of the genus Chamaecrista (Fabaceae), BP.TT

(Only some records are available in English at this moment)

• Abstract

  Individuals interact simultaneously during their life cycle with multiple mutualistic partners that provides different resources or services. Although we have information about the effect of multiple mutualisms on the same individual on local ecological scale, the evolutionary consequences of the co-occurrence of different mutualisms on one lineage has been mostly neglected. This study ai…

  How does an ecological cost of a protective mutualism affect the evolution of flower phenotype?, BE.EP.DR

• Abstract

  The evolution of mutualistic interactions depends on mechanisms that reduce the individual's chance to interact with exploiters (i.e. individuals providing none or little benefits). Despite verbal and mathematical models predicting some of these mechanisms for several types of mutualistic interactions, these models neglect two important features of mutualist-exploiter interactions: (1) th…

  How bad are the bad guys? Investigating factors driving the costs imposed by floral exploiters to animal-pollinated plants, BE.PQ