Specialist arthropod symbioses as anchors of biodiversity: multitrophic diversification in gall-associated communities

Quin Baine, PhD Student
Biology
Mentor: Ellen Martinson
Symbiotic interactions play an integral role in maintaining and promoting biodiversity in ecosystems. Organisms in partnership adapt not only to environmental conditions, but to each other, and this can result in rapid diversification in both partners.
Gall-inducing insects are specialist herbivores with plant hosts, but they are also ecosystem engineers that create and maintain novel structures that are used by other insects.
Together, the plant host, gall-inducer and associated insects all make up a community that interacts with particular structural traits of the gall.
In my research, I examine the morphological and genomic drivers of diversification in a unique plant-animal-animal tri-trophic system.