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LoPresti Plant/Insect Ecology Lab

Welcome to the LoPresti Lab's website. We are a group of passionate plant/insect ecologists and evolutionary biologists at the University of South Carolina.

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I am currently recruiting  undergraduates (at U of SC) for the lab. While I do not have post-doc or visiting scientist funding, I would be happy to work with anyone on fellowship applications. Please get in touch if anything the lab does sounds interesting!

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At this time, I have a wonderful set of graduate students and am not considering any more. 

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Research

Our research is varied, but doesn't stray far from how plants and insects are able to survive and reproduce. We are currently studying pollination, generally, and more specifically the effects of pigment and morphology on pollination success in sand verbenas, seed ecology and seed defense against granivores, as well as "bodyguard" mutualisms in sticky plants. We also dabble in plant evolution, volatile chemistry, floral structure, insect community dynamics, and several other topics that are of interest to our lab members. 

Latest Publications

Mucilage binding to ground protects seeds of many plants from harvester ants: A functional investigation - Functional Ecology

We found that seeds bound to the ground with mucilage (a common property of diverse seeds) were better protected from harvester ants than unbound seeds. We also incorporated a meta-analysis of mucilage adhesion and found that there were some climatic (dryness, solar intensity) and life history variables (annuals) that predicted "stickier" seeds. We are excited about these results and hope both the small-scale protection and the larger-scale trends lead to more people studying mucilage and finding cool things! 

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