November 17^th to 29^th 2017 – Ilha do Cardoso – São Paulo

Application Guidelines

                  The international pollination course is a longstanding biannual field course aimed at training graduate, advanced undergraduate and professionals, working with pollination ecology and floral biology. In 2017 the course will take place at Ilha do Cardoso in the State of São Paulo. The course is organised by a permanent core team (Kayna Agostini – UFSCar – Araras; Marina Wolowski – UNIFAL-MG; Vinicius L. G. Brito – UFU; André Rodrigo Rech – UFVJM; Patrícia Alves Ferreira – USP; Luísa G. Carvalheiro – UnB and Leandro Freitas – JBRJ) and receives National and International contributions at every edition. The main objectives of the course are to present and discuss different ecological and evolutive aspects of pollination biology, develop the student’s ability to generate novel interesting hypotheses related to the topic and to develop the skills to design experiments that allow to test such hypotheses under field conditions. Eligible applications must fulfil the following requirements:

1. To be a graduate or an advanced undergraduate student or a professional working in the area of pollination ecology or floral biology;
2. To fulfil the online application form (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AjRbGLCCjUQU-reR8bcbQbDHpPO2rGWpUyz7s9h2E4s);
3. To send an application letter justifying the relevance of the course for the applicant’s carrier;
4. To pay the course fee (R$ 1350,00*) during the confirmation period (timetable below).

* The course fee will cover transport by boat from Cananeia to the Cardoso Island, accommodation and food during the course. In the accommodation there is no internet connexion but it is possible to use the mobile phone (vivo) in some places on the Island.

Information and maps on how to get to Cananeia are available at http://www.cananet.com.br/html/comochegar.html

The application process will follow this timetable:

Course Program

Day 17

Meeting at Cananeia and travel by nautical transport to Cardoso Island

DAY 18

Morning

Class 1. History of Pollination Biology (André Rech)

Class 2. Flower Morphology and Function (Kayna Agostini)

Class 3. Floral Attraction (Vinicius L. G. Brito)

Class 4. Pollinator Cognitive Ecology (Vinicius L. G. Brito)

Afternoon

Class 5. Floral Rewards – Nectar (Leonardo Galetto)

Class 6. Floral Rewards – Pollen  (Mario Vallejo-Marin)

Class 7. Deception in Pollination (Allan Ellis)

Class 8. Plant Reproductive Strategies (Marina Wolowski)

DAY 19

Morning

Class 9. Pollination Systems – Invertebrates (Leandro Freitas / Cláudia Inês Silva)

Class 10. Pollination Systems – Vertebrates (Kayna Agostini)

Afternoon

Class 11. Phenotypic Selection Studies in Pollination Biology (Rodrigo Medel)

Class 12. Questions and Experimental Design in Pollination Studies (Leonardo Galetto)

Class 13. Natural history of the Cardoso Island

DAY 20

Morning / Afternoon

Field/Laboratory I. Demonstration of methods (field and laboratory) for pollination studies (nectar measure, stigma receptivity, floral scent, pollen viability, breeding system experiments, floral visitors’ observation, behavior description and taxonomic identification). All Professors

Night

Talk A. Continuum of Specialization to Generalization in Pollination (André Rech)

Talk B. Pollinator Effectiveness and Floral Traits as Filters of Less Effective Floral Visitors (Allan Ellis)

DAY 21

Morning / Afternoon

Field/Laboratory II. Demonstration of methods (field and lab) for pollination studies (nectar measure, stigma receptivity, floral scent, pollen viability, breeding system experiments, floral visitors’ observation, behaviour description and taxonomic identification) – All Professors

Night

Students presentations I. Methods for Pollination Studies

DAY 22

Morning / Afternoon

Research project I. Definition of working groups and model system to develop short research projects

Night

Talk C. Pollination and Landscape Ecology (Patrícia Alves Ferreira)

Talk D. Disentangling the complexity of pollinator-mediated selection (Rodrigo Medel)

DAY 23

Morning / Afternoon

Research project II. Student supervised data collection in the field

Talk F. Nature Photography and Video: a good tool to understand natural history in pollination biology (João Paulo Krajewski)

DAY 24

Morning / Afternoon

Research project III. Student supervised data collection in the field

Night

Talk G. Data Digitalization in pollination biology (Antônio Mauro Saraiva)

Talk H. Integration of pollinators in ecological interaction networks (Luisa Carvalheiro)

DAY 25

Morning / Afternoon

Research project IV. Student supervised data collection in the field and data analyses

Night

Talk I. Crop Pollination and Economy of Pollination Services (Kayna Agostini / Cláudia Inês Silva)

Talk J. Conservation of pollinators and pollination (Luisa Carvalheiro)

DAY 26

Morning / Afternoon

Research project V. Student supervised data collection in the field and data analyses

Night

Talk K. When floral visitors turn bad: Nectar and pollen theft (Mario Vallejo-Marin)

DAY 27

Morning / Afternoon

Research project VI. Data analyses

Night

Talk L. How can genetics help to study pollination? (Mario Vallejo-Marin)

DAY 28

All day

Students presentations I. Research projects presentations

DAY 29

Travel by nautical transport to Cananeia

Further doubts, suggestions and information may be obtained from rebipp2016@gmail.com