VOLF LAB - Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology

We show how chemical diversity evolves in plants at different elevations

6/27/2023

Plants produce an astonishing diversity of various chemicals. So far, more than 200,000 different plant metabolites have been described. Individual specialized metabolites help plants cope with detrimental abiotic factors or defend themselves against natural enemies, such as herbivores and pathogens. While we understand the functions of some of these metabolites in plants, we still seek explanations for their seemingly excessive diversity.

We kickstarted fieldwork within a new project on hybrid willows

6/8/2023

In the past month, we kickstarted the first year of field work within a project that aims to explore adaptive hybridization in willows.

In her new publication, Priscila shows how plants respond to different insect herbivores

6/2/2023

Plants produce diverse chemical defences with contrasting effects on different insect herbivores. Deploying herbivore-specific responses can help plants increase their defensive efficacy. Here, we exposed 149 plants of Salix fragilis to 22 herbivore species from various orders and feeding guilds and explored the induced responses in volatiles and non-volatile leaf metabolites.
The volatile composition was best explained by chewing damage and insect order. Furthermore, we recorded significant differences in elicited volatiles among some species within the orders. Variation in non-volatile leaf metabolites was mainly explained by the presence of insects, as plants exposed to herbivores showed significantly different metabolites from controls.

We welcome Sofian as a new PhD student to our team!

3/27/2023

Sofian has joined our team to study ecology of hybrid willows. He is going to explore changes in their chemistry and biotic interactions along ecological gradients to explore if hybrids extend niches of their parental species.

Priscila won the prize for best student talk at a PhD student conference

2/27/2023

Priscila Mezzomo, who is a PhD student in our team, won the prize for best student talk at a PhD student conference organized by the Department of Zoology, University of South Bohemia.

PF 2023

12/22/2022

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Merry Christmas and happiness,
good health, love and many publications
in the New Year 2023!
from Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology

We are opening a new position for a PhD Student in Insect-Plant Interactions

10/11/2022

Hybridization as a path to success? Adaptive hybridization in willows in face of biotic and abiotic pressures.

We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate to join a project funded by Czech Science Foundation that aims at exploring if the hybridization in plants is fuelled by the adaptive value of hybrids in face of biotic and abiotic selection pressures. The project focuses on willows as a diverse and dominant key-stone plant genus to explore the distribution of their hybrids in natural communities and to dissect their interactions with insect herbivores and environment along elevational gradients.

Why are highland plants chemically distinct? Find out in our new paper by Martin and Terka!

9/2/2022

Plants produce an astonishing diversity of chemical compounds that help them to cope with various types of stress. Here we used willows growing along an elevational gradient to compare various aspects of chemical diversity among plants exposed to different environmental conditions.

Martin was awarded the Award of the Czech Academy of Science

7/27/2022

Martin Volf, head of Laboratory of Evolutionary Ecology, was awarded the Award of the CAS for young scientific employees for outstanding results of scientific work. He showed that branch-localized induction creates a chemical mosaic in canopy trees, promoting variation in tree chemistry, predation, and herbivore abundance across forest canopies.

Gibson joins our team!

7/25/2022

Gibson Aubona has joined our team as a new doctoral student. Gibson has gained his MSc. degree at the University of Goroka where he studied environmental toxicology. He has already collaborated with our lab on several projects on chemical ecology of plant-insect interactions in Papua New Guinea. During his doctoral studies, he will now focus on the chemical defences and biotic interactions associated with temperate and tropical tree species from the willow family.

New Publications

Mezzomo, P., Weinhold, A., Aurová, K., Jorge, L. R., Kozel, P., Michálek, J., Nováková, N., Seifert, C. L., Volfová, T., Engström, M., Salminen, J.-P., Sedio, B. E., & Volf, M. (2023). Leaf volatile and nonvolatile metabolites show different levels of specificity in response to herbivory. Ecology and Evolution, 13, e10123. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10123
Volf M, Volfová T, Seifert CL, Ludwig A, Engelmann RA, Jorge LR, Richter R, Schedl A, Weinhold A, Wirth C, van Dam NM. A mosaic of induced and non-induced branches promotes variation in leaf traits, predation and insect herbivore assemblages in canopy trees. Ecology Letters. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13943

Leong JV, Jorge LR, Seifert CL, Volf M. Quantity and specialisation matter: Effects of quantitative and qualitative variation in willow chemistry on resource preference in leaf-chewing insects. Insect Conservation and Diversity. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12559

Volf M, Weinhold A, Seifert CL, Holicová T, Uthe H, Alander E, Richter R, Salminen JP, Wirth C, van Dam NM. Branch-localized induction promotes efficacy of volatile defences and herbivore predation in trees. Journal of Chemical Ecology. 2021. 47:99-111. DOI: 10.1007/s10886-020-01232-z

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