Dataset Information

Dispersal and establishment of vascular epiphytes in human-modified landscapes.

ABSTRACT: The ongoing destruction of old-growth forests puts tropical forest species under great pressure because of the resulting habitat loss. A pre-requisite for the maintenance of a viable metacommunity in a fragmented landscape is the connectivity between habitable patches. We experimentally studied four vital steps of epiphyte dispersal in different habitat types in western Panama. (i) Seed falling velocity (V_term) is known to correlate with long-distance dispersal via convective updraft. All measured V_term of bromeliad and orchid seeds fell into a range of velocities with a high chance of long-distance dispersal. (ii) We quantified attachment success of bromeliad seeds as a function of bark rugosity with >30 common tree species in the region. Even fine bark structure allowed effective attachment. (iii and iv) Successful establishment is achieved when a seed germinates and a plantlet grows and survives. Germination success and early establishment of four bromeliad species did not differ between isolated trees, teak plantations or secondary forest patches. Microclimatic differences between habitat types were marginal and neither germination nor establishment correlated significantly with annual precipitation. The findings suggest a large capacity for dispersal and successful early establishment for these anemochorous species. A potentially regenerating forest may receive considerable input from sources such as pasture trees and in this way gain structural complexity, which also greatly enhances its value for other forest organisms.

SUBMITTER: Einzmann HJR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5714248 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Dispersal and establishment of vascular epiphytes in human-modified landscapes.

Einzmann Helena J R HJR Zotz Gerhard G

AoB PLANTS 20171003 6

The ongoing destruction of old-growth forests puts tropical forest species under great pressure because of the resulting habitat loss. A pre-requisite for the maintenance of a viable metacommunity in a fragmented landscape is the connectivity between habitable patches. We experimentally studied four vital steps of epiphyte dispersal in different habitat types in western Panama. (i) Seed falling velocity (<i>V</i><sub>term</sub>) is known to correlate with long-distance dispersal via convective u ...[more]

PMID: 29225763

Similar Datasets

Project description:Protandry (prior emergence of males) in insect populations is usually considered to be the result of natural selection acting directly on eclosion timing. When females are monandrous (mate once), males in high density populations benefit from early emergence in the intense scramble competition for mates. In low density populations, however, scramble competition is reduced or absent, and theoretical models predict that protandry will be less favoured. This raises the question of how males behave in heterogeneous landscapes characterized by high density core populations in a low density continuum. We hypothesized that disadvantaged late emerging males in a core population would disperse to the continuum to find mates. We tested this idea using the protandrous, monandrous, pierid butterfly Anthocharis cardamines (the orange-tip) in a core population in Cheshire, northwest England. Over a six-year period, predicted male fitness (the number of matings a male can expect during his residence time, determined by the daily ratio of virgin females to competing males) consistently declined to <1 in late season. This decline affected a large proportion (∼44%) of males in the population and was strongly associated with decreased male recapture-rates, which we attribute to dispersal to the surrounding continuum. In contrast, reanalysis of mark-release-recapture data from an isolated population in Durham, northeast England, showed that in the absence of a continuum very few males (∼3%) emerged when fitness declined to <1 in late season. Hence the existence of a low density continuum may lead to the evolution of plastic dispersal behaviour in high density core populations, maintaining late emerging males which would otherwise be eliminated by selection. This has important theoretical consequences, since a truncated male emergence curve is a key prediction in game theoretic models of emergence timing which has so far received limited support. Our results have implications for conservation, since plastic dispersal behaviour in response to imperfect emergence timing in core (source) populations could help to maintain sink populations in heterogeneous landscapes which would otherwise be driven to extinction by low mate encounter-rates (Allee effects).

Dataset Information

Dispersal and establishment of vascular epiphytes in human-modified landscapes.

Publications

Dispersal and establishment of vascular epiphytes in human-modified landscapes.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets