Marcel Dorken
Professor
- B.Sc. (Guelph)
- M.Sc. (Queen's)
- Ph.D. (Toronto)
- P.D.F (Oxford)
Office: DNA C250
Phone: 705-748-1011 ext. 7585
Email: marceldorken@trentu.ca
Webpage: www.people.trentu.ca/marceldorken
Research interests:
- Evolution and ecology of plant reproduction
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Plant-pollinator interactions
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Invasive plant biology
Evolutionary transitions from one form of reproduction to another are associated with key changes in the ecology, life-history and genetic structure of plant populations. I am interested in two of these transitions, the evolution of separate sexes (dioecy) from combined sexes (hermaphroditism), and the evolution of asexuality from sexual reproduction. Most of the ongoing projects in the lab involve the first of these transitions, the evolution of separate sexes, which has occurred at least 100 times in the flowering plants alone. We use a combination of field work, manipulative experiments, and genetic marker studies to examine how and why unisexuality has evolved in this group.
Teaching
Biol 1020H: Foundations of Biodiversity
Biol 3170H: Plants and their Ancestors
Biol 3190H: Wild Plants of Ontario
Biol 4610H: Evolutionary Ecology
Selected publications
Van Drunen WE, van Kleunen M, Dorken ME. 2015. Consequences of clonality for sexual fitness: Clonal expansion enhances fitness under spatially restricted dispersal. PNAS. 112:8929-8936.
Bunbury-Blanchette AL, Freeland JR, Dorken ME. 2015. Hybrid Typha × glauca outperforms native T. latifolia under contrasting water depths in a common garden. Basic and Applied Ecology 16:394-402.
Van Drunen WE, Dorken ME. 2012. Trade‐offs between clonal and sexual reproduction in Sagittaria latifolia (Alismataceae) scale up to affect the fitness of entire clones. New Phytologist 196:606-616.
Perry LE, Dorken, ME. 2011. The evolution of males: support for predictions from sex allocation theory using mating arrays of Sagittaria latifolia (Alismataceae). Evolution 65:2782-2791.