This international planning grant will support principal investigators, Sagers and Garwood, to travel to six countries (Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, French Guiana and Suriname) in order to form a network of researchers in several neotropical locations. For each of these countries the investigators have identified counterpart researchers who will help to plan the expected collaboration that will be the end result of these visits. Two graduate students will also each be included in their visits.
The goal of the network is to study coevolutionary dynamics of the interaction between a prominent neotropical plant genus, Cecropia, and two groups of insects commonly associated with it: ants that mutualistically defend the plants from their natural enemies, and coccoids, plant herbivores that are mutualistically defended by those ants. The primary planed outcome of this grant will be the submission of several NSF proposals by the US members of this network in collaboration with their foreign collaborators. The proposed travel will be to assess foreign facilities, and study sites, and to have detailed discussions with prospective foreign partners.
