Date: July 15, 2025

Time: 6:00 p.m.

Location: Landrum Library

Speaker: Dr. Grace Freundlich, Assistant Professor at Furman University

Plant-pollinator interactions are of vital importance to ecosystem functioning and a viable human civilization. To date, we’ve extensively studied how pollinators select for certain flowering plants and how these preferences shape floral morphology. For example, pollinating flies preferentially select flowers with yellow or white flowers, while birds visit bright red flowers with deep corollas, and bees prefer to visit purple-colored flowers (Reverté et al. 2016). While pollinators select for various traits in flowers, we have failed to fully identify how floral microbes influence plant-pollinator interactions.

Within the past 20 years, we’ve documented the presence of various floral bacteria and yeasts that reside on petals, in nectar, and in pollen and how these communities differ across certain regions and flower species (Vannette 2020) (Burgess and Schaeffer 2022). Additionally, we’ve noted how certain groups of microbes can influence pollinator behavior when they are present in flowers (Schaeffer et al. 2017; Schaeffer et al. 2019). However, we have not, to Dr. Freundlich’s knowledge, taken the time to identify specific physiological and morphological features that may impact how these communities are shaped inside of these flowers. In this presentation, Dr. Freundlich will discuss the work that she and her students have done addressing this question with a range of techniques, including imaging the surface of floral structures and quantifying differences in visitation rates among common pollinator friendly plants in the Upstate.

Dr. Freundlich has always been interested in plant defense and the strategies they utilize. As an undergraduate at Dickinson College, she studied how carbon dioxide enrichment impacted seagrass defenses. Soon after graduation, she work at the Ohio State University to assess which genes conferred resistance in soybean against soybean cyst nematodes. After this experience, she completed her Ph.D. studying how plant-plant communication impacts plant defense strategies in agricultural settings and soon moved to Utah State University for her postdoctoral position. In this post, she investigated how herbivore-induced shifts in floral chemistry alter floral microbe communities and pollinator visitation. Additionally, Dr. Freundlich received a National Science Foundation award to study how floral bacteria and yeast alter floral trait evolution in the model plant Brassica rapa. As an assistant professor at Furman, she is excited to work with students determining how plant chemistry in flowers and leaves influences plant-species interactions.

The Landrum Library Speaker Series programs are made possible thanks to our partnership with the Spartanburg County Public Libraries.

Contact Pam Torlina, pam@conservingcarolina.org, with questions or for more information.