About

Flowers act as a nexus for plants’ interactions with animals, microbes, and co-flowering species. These interactions can be mutualistic, antagonistic, and commensal, and they are shaped by floral traits. Our lab aims to understand how floral traits such as color, nutrition, and chemistry shape plants’ interactions (please see Jake’s Google Scholar Profile for the most up-to-date list of published work.

The Francis Lab is part of the Department of Biology at Florida Atlantic University! We are currently searching for new lab members across all levels. Please reach out at francisj[at]fau.edu.

Our Core Values: We believe that the best science is a creative endeavor done collaboratively, that diverse perspectives help generate the most intriguing hypotheses, and that there are many ways to understand our natural world.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Florida Atlantic University.

 

What we do

In our work we combine plant, pollinator, and microbial perspectives to understand how floral traits impact pollinator behavior and microbial ecology. Our methods range from lab based behavior experiments to landscape scale ecological studies, and our work is built on a foundation of understanding how organisms interact with each other and their environment in natural communities.

Main Research Areas (links to more details)

Floral Reward Chemistry

Community-Scale Pollination Ecology

Pollinator Foraging Behavior

Impact of Invasive Exotic Species