Announcement: EES seminar (June 1, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM, Dr. Martin Volf)

We will have an EES seminar on June 1 from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM as follows. We look forward to your participation.

Date and Time: Monday, June 1, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Venue: Room D201, Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
Speaker: Dr. Marin Volf (Institute of Entomology, Biology Center CAS, Czech; https://www.volflab.com/)
Title: Evolution and roles of phytochemical diversity in ecological interactions
Language: English

Abstract: Plants produce a wide diversity of specialized metabolites that help them persist across contrasting environments. Variation in phytochemical diversity and in plant chemical strategies plays key roles in plant responses to both biotic and abiotic stress. This is particularly relevant along ecological gradients in climatic conditions, resource availability, and biotic interactions. Recent advances in untargeted metabolomics now allow us to quantify multiple dimensions of plant chemistry, including metabolite concentration, richness, and α- and β-diversity, while also accounting for structural relatedness among metabolites. In this talk, I will focus on exploring how such approaches make it possible to assess not only whether plant chemistry changes along environmental gradients, but also which dimensions of phytochemical diversity respond most strongly to different sources of stress.