Dataset Information

Frugivory in Canopy Plants in a Western Amazonian Forest: Dispersal Systems, Phylogenetic Ensembles and Keystone Plants.

ABSTRACT: Frugivory is a widespread mutualistic interaction in which frugivores obtain nutritional resources while favoring plant recruitment through their seed dispersal services. Nonetheless, how these complex interactions are organized in diverse communities, such as tropical forests, is not fully understood. In this study we evaluated the existence of plant-frugivore sub-assemblages and their phylogenetic organization in an undisturbed western Amazonian forest in Colombia. We also explored for potential keystone plants, based on network analyses and an estimate of the amount of fruit going from plants to frugivores. We carried out diurnal observations on 73 canopy plant species during a period of two years. During focal tree sampling, we recorded frugivore identity, the duration of each individual visit, and feeding rates. We did not find support for the existence of sub assemblages, such as specialized vs. generalized dispersal systems. Visitation rates on the vast majority of canopy species were associated with the relative abundance of frugivores, in which ateline monkeys (i.e. Lagothrix and Ateles) played the most important roles. All fruiting plants were visited by a variety of frugivores and the phylogenetic assemblage was random in more than 67% of the cases. In cases of aggregation, the plant species were consumed by only primates or only birds, and filters were associated with fruit protection and likely chemical content. Plants suggested as keystone species based on the amount of pulp going from plants to frugivores differ from those suggested based on network approaches. Our results suggest that in tropical forests most tree-frugivore interactions are generalized, and abundance should be taken into account when assessing the most important plants for frugivores.

SUBMITTER: Stevenson PR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4619584 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Frugivory in Canopy Plants in a Western Amazonian Forest: Dispersal Systems, Phylogenetic Ensembles and Keystone Plants.

Stevenson Pablo R PR Link Andrés A González-Caro Sebastian S Torres-Jiménez María Fernanda MF

PloS one 20151022 10

Frugivory is a widespread mutualistic interaction in which frugivores obtain nutritional resources while favoring plant recruitment through their seed dispersal services. Nonetheless, how these complex interactions are organized in diverse communities, such as tropical forests, is not fully understood. In this study we evaluated the existence of plant-frugivore sub-assemblages and their phylogenetic organization in an undisturbed western Amazonian forest in Colombia. We also explored for potenti ...[more]

PMID: 26492037

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Project description:There is growing interest in understanding the functional outcomes of species interactions in ecological networks. For many mutualistic networks, including pollination and seed dispersal networks, interactions are generally sampled by recording animal foraging visits to plants. However, these visits may not reflect actual pollination or seed dispersal events, despite these typically being the ecological processes of interest. Frugivorous animals can act as seed dispersers, by swallowing entire fruits and dispersing their seeds, or as pulp peckers or seed predators, by pecking fruits to consume pieces of pulp or seeds. These processes have opposing consequences for plant reproductive success. Therefore, equating visitation with seed dispersal could lead to biased inferences about the ecology, evolution and conservation of seed dispersal mutualisms. Here, we use natural history information on the functional outcomes of pairwise bird-plant interactions to examine changes in the structure of seven European plant-frugivore visitation networks after non-mutualistic interactions (pulp pecking and seed predation) have been removed. Following existing knowledge of the contrasting structures of mutualistic and antagonistic networks, we hypothesized a number of changes following interaction removal, such as increased nestedness and lower specialization. Non-mutualistic interactions with pulp peckers and seed predators occurred in all seven networks, accounting for 21%-48% of all interactions and 6%-24% of total interaction frequency. When non-mutualistic interactions were removed, there were significant increases in network-level metrics such as connectance and nestedness, while robustness decreased. These changes were generally small, homogenous and driven by decreases in network size. Conversely, changes in species-level metrics were more variable and sometimes large, with significant decreases in plant degree, interaction frequency, specialization and resilience to animal extinctions and significant increases in frugivore species strength. Visitation data can overestimate the actual frequency of seed dispersal services in plant-frugivore networks. We show here that incorporating natural history information on the functions of species interactions can bring us closer to understanding the processes and functions operating in ecological communities. Our categorical approach lays the foundation for future work quantifying functional interaction outcomes along a mutualism-antagonism continuum, as documented in other frugivore faunas.

Dataset Information

Frugivory in Canopy Plants in a Western Amazonian Forest: Dispersal Systems, Phylogenetic Ensembles and Keystone Plants.

Publications

Frugivory in Canopy Plants in a Western Amazonian Forest: Dispersal Systems, Phylogenetic Ensembles and Keystone Plants.

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