Identifying Oak Masting drivers

Identifying oak masting drivers is a major goal to achieve in order to be able to build more accurate models to predict oak masting and to forecast it’s evolution in the context of climate change. To do so I used during my PhD a unique 8 years-survey of flower and fruit production of 150 temperate oak trees (Quercus petraea) located upon 15 sites spread across France. I also used daily and monthly weather data for each sites as well as daily pollen record for 79 french cities. I am interested in :

• Understanding the importance of flowering effort in acorn production pattern.
• Showing how the relative contribution of masting drivers can fluctuate between populations living in contrasted environments.
• Understanding what drives pollen limitation mechanism in temperate oak species.
• Studying how oak pollen phenology has changed on the past three decades and how it shaped the evolution of pollen phenology.
• Predicting the evolution of acorn production dynamic along a climatic gradient.

This work will lead to three papers, one manuscript has been accepted in Current Biology. The two other papers are in progress.