How will global change affect plant reproduction? A framework for mast seeding trends

Forest ecology traditionally focuses on plant growth and survival, leaving seed production as a major demographic process lacking a framework for how it will be affected by global change. Understanding plant reproductive responses to changing climate is complicated by masting, the annually variable seed production synchronized within populations. Predicting trends in masting is crucial, because masting impacts seed predation and pollination enough to override simple trends in mean seed production. Proximate mechanisms of seed production patterns in perennial plants are gathered to identify processes through which masting may be affected by a changing environment. Predicting trends in masting will require understanding the mechanisms that cause predictable seed failure after high-seed years, and the stochastic mechanisms that synchronize individuals in high-seed years.

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Michal Bogdziewicz is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Environmental Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznan, Poland. Michal’s research program involves several forest ecology subfields, including interactions between plants and animals (both seed consumers and seed dispersers), and mechanisms driving variation in plant fecundity. A major focus of the work is to understand proximate and ultimate drivers of mast seeding, socioecological consequences of pulsed reproduction, and the climate change impacts on seed production and recruitment.

Michal obtained his BSc in Biology (2010) and his MSc in Ecology (2012) from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. His PhD thesis was jointly supervised by Rafal Zwolak (AMU) and Elizabeth Crone (Tufts University, MA, USA). After completing his PhD, Michal moved to Barcelona and undertook two postdoctoral positions at CREAF, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. He is currently a Bekker Fellow at LESSEM, at INRAE in Grenoble (France) where he works in the Mast Inference and Prediction (MASTIF) project led by James Clark (Duke University, NC, USA). Starting in 2023, he will head the newly established, ERC-funded, Forest Biology Centre at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.