Contact
Université Paul Sabatier
118 route de Narbonne
Toulouse
Phone: +33(0)561556758
gonzalez.mailyn@gmail.com
Current
research interests
Species coexistence, community
ecology, biological
interactions,
tropical botany, molecular plant biology.
Research projects
PhD: “From individuals to communities: Diversity and community structure of tropical plants in
The aim of my thesis is to
understand
the ecological mechanisms driving species assemblages and shaping
diversity in
tropical plant communities. To approach this question I collected data
from two
undisturbed forests in The
identification of tropical plant species based on morphological
characters
remains a major challenge due to the huge diversity harboured in these
communities, and to the frequent absence of key informative traits such
as
fruits or flowers. To overcome this limitation, the use of several DNA
regions
as species identifiers is a promising avenue of research. During my
dissertation, I sampled more than 250 species of woody plants and
tested the
reliability of DNA barcoding to delimitate species. Combination of DNA
barcoding information and morphology will reduce plant species
missidentification and therefore, should allow scientists to
address ecological questions at large scale with more accuracy.
(2) Phylogenetic structure of tropical plant communities
Coexisting species in a community have an evolutionary history that can be used to understand the ecological forces that drive species assemblages. If the major ecological force is competition, the community is more likely to consist of unrelated species. In contrast, if habitat filtering is more important than competition, communities should be composed of closely related species. For my dissertation I sampled tree and seedling communities and used phylogenetic information to disentangle these hypotheses.
Links
http://ecofog.cirad.fr/BRIDGE/index.html
Previous research
Adaptative
significance of a leaf polymorphism in an oceanic plant
species. We
investigated the geographical distribution of heterophilly found in Dombeya acutangula
across la Reunion Island. This species presents a bimodal leaf
polymorphism with one morph
(palmata) harbouring more dissected leaves than the other morph
(acutangula). The palmata
morph is only present in lowland dry environments
while the acutangula morph occurs over the entire environmental
range of the species (from sea level to 1200m altitude). Although, the
palmata morph is more likely
to be adapted to xeric environments, past herbivore
pressure might have played a role in the evolution of
heterophilly.
Collaboration
with Dr. Luc Gigord and Dr. Christophe Lavergne
We
investigated the European deceptive orchid Traunsteinera globosa. This plant is thought to
be involved in a mimetic system. We found that the
reproductive success of the
deceptive
orchid was positively correlated to the density of coflowering plants
and
in particular
to the density of Trifolium
pratense.
The similar colour of T. pratense could explain the
variation in the reproductive success of T. globosa. However,
experimental investigations are
required to fully address this hypothesis.
Evolutionary
ecology of deceptive orchids
Collaboration
with Dr. Nicolas Juillet, Dr. Luc Gigord, and Paul Page
Publications
N Norden, M Daws, C Antoine, MA Gonzalez, N Garwood, J Chave. The relationship between seed mass and germination delay for 1,043 tree species across five tropical forests. Functional Ecology. In press
N Juillet, MA Gonzalez, PA Page, LDB Gigord. Pollination of the European food-deceptive Traunsteinera globosa (Orchidaceae): The importance of nectar-producing-neighboring plants. Plants Systematics and Evolution. 265:123-129
