NICKOLAS M. WASER
Professor of Biology Emeritus
E-mail: nickolas.waser@ucr.edu
Degree:
Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1977
Animal visitors such as bumble bees, solitary bees, and hummingbirds
play a critical role in the sexual reproduction of many higher plants.
How do such pollinators choose flowers, and how does this translate into
natural selection on discrete and quantitative traits such as flower color
and shape or nectar production? What is the role of animal visitors in gene
dispersal, and how does this influence spatial genetic structure of plant
populations, the establishment of hybrid populations, and plant speciation?
How do the "post-pollination" events beginning after dispersal
of pollen and culminating in seed production modify the selection and gene
flow caused by pollinators? From a community perspective, how are plant-pollinator
interactions organized, how and why are they usually generalized, and what
are the implications for resilience of food webs and conservation of endangered
species? I am exploring these and related questions, mostly with plant-pollinator
systems in the Rocky Mountains and southwestern deserts.
Dr. Waser participates in the Evolutionary
Biology graduate group.
Some Representative Publications....
- Waser, N. M. 1978. Interspecific pollen transfer and competition between co-occuring plant species. Oecologia 36:223-236.
- Waser, N. M. and M. V. Price. 1983. Pollinator behaviour and natural selection for flower colour in Delphinium nelsonii. Nature 302:422-424.
- Waser, N. M., L. Chittka, M. V. Price, N. Williams, and J. Ollerton. 1996. Generalization in pollination systems, and why it matters. Ecology 77:1043-1060.
- Waser, N. and L. Chittka. 1998. Bedazzled by flowers. Nature 394:836-837.
- Kearns, C. K., D. W. Inouye, and N. M. Waser. 1998. Endangered mutualisms: the conservation biology of plant-pollinator interactions. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 29:83-112.
- Chittka, L., J. D. Thomson, and N. M. Waser. 1999. Flower constancy, insect psychology, and plant evolution. Naturwissenschaften 86:361-377.
- Waser, N. M., M. V. Price, and R. G. Shaw. 2000. Outbreeding depression varies among cohorts of Ipomopsis aggregata planted in nature. Evolution 54:485-491.
- Waser, N. M. 2001. Pollinator foraging and plant speciation: looking beyond the "ethological isolation" paradigm. In: Cognitive Ecology of Pollination, eds. L. Chittka and J. D. Thomson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
Click here for a complete publication list.
Recent Teaching....
- Biology 5C, Introduction to Population Biology
- Biology 118/218, Field Course in Evolutionary Ecology
- Biology 216, The Theory of Evolution
- Biology 217, Graduate Population and Community Ecology