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Microsites where seeds arrive during the dispersal process determine plant reproductive success, affecting the quality of dispersal. Despite their crucial role for plant recruitment, very few studies have addressed spatio–temporal variations in microsites of seed arrival in complex seed‐disperser networks. Using an endozoochorous dispersal system, we characterized the microsites of seed arrival of...
Large animal species, which provide important ecological functions such as dispersal of seeds or top–down control of seed predators, are very vulnerable in fragmented forests, being unable to survive in small fragments, and facing increasing hunting pressure. The loss of large animals affects two main ecological processes crucial for the tree reproductive cycle: seed dispersal of large seeds (e.g...
Indirect interactions play an essential role in governing population, community and coevolutionary dynamics across a diverse range of ecological communities. Such communities are widely represented as bipartite networks: graphs depicting interactions between two groups of species, such as plants and pollinators or hosts and parasites. For over thirty years, studies have used indices, such as connectance...
Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing plants have important effects on the biogeochemical processes of the sites they inhabit, but their ability to reach these sites is determined by the dispersal of their seeds. Differences in seed size and dispersal vectors of N‐fixing and non‐fixing plants could influence the spatial and temporal distributions of N fixers, and thus could have important impacts on biogeochemical...
Climate change is resulting in shifts in species’ ranges as species inhabit new climatically suitable areas. A key factor affecting range‐shifts is the interaction with predators. Small mammals, being primary seed predators and dispersers in forest ecosystems, may play a major role in determining which plant species will successfully expand and the rate at which range‐shifts will occur. Plants dispersing...
Substantial intra‐specific trait variation exists within plant communities, and in theory this variation could influence community dynamics. Although recent research has focused on intra‐specific variation in traits themselves, it is the influence of this variation on plant performance that makes intra‐specific trait variation relevant to ecological dynamics within or among species. Understanding...
The nature and the strength of plant–frugivore interactions often vary along an antagonism–mutualism continuum and are highly influenced by the local ecological context (e.g. level of environmental disturbances). However, little is known concerning how the local ecological setting where plant–frugivore interactions take place affects the seed dispersal effectiveness (SDE) and, eventually, plant recruitment...
What processes and factors are responsible for species distribution are long‐standing questions in ecology and a key element for conservation and management. Mistletoes provide the opportunity to study a forest species whose occurrence is expected to be constrained by multiple factors as a consequence of their life form. We studied the mistletoe Tristerix corymbosus (Loranthaceae) on its most common...
In mast‐seeding species, strong annual variation in seed production is assumed to drive seed fate and ultimately plant recruitment. However, the effects of temporal variation in seed crops on spatial patterns of seed rain and recruitment are poorly understood, in part because of limited data on fine‐scale spatial variation of seed deposition. To investigate how mast‐seeding affects spatial variation...
Fleshy fruits have evolved to be attractive to frugivorous seed dispersers. As a result, many fruit traits like size, color, scent and nutritional content are assumed to be the result of selective pressures exerted by frugivores. At the same time, fruit traits are also subjected to a set of other selective pressures and constraints. One such trait is fruit hardness. On one hand, haptic cues have been...
Seed dispersal is a critical ecological function provided largely by vertebrate frugivores in tropical forests. The seed dispersal events mediated by a frugivore species depend on the interaction between the frugivore's traits and landscape structure. Managers seeking to restore seed dispersal to degraded areas to facilitate passive regeneration must consider these interactions. We explore how the...
Plant dispersal syndromes are allocated based on diaspore morphology and used to predict the dominant mechanisms of dispersal. Many authors assume that only angiosperms with endozoochory, epizoochory or anemochory syndromes have a long‐distance dispersal (LDD) mechanism. Too much faith is often placed in classical syndromes to explain historical dispersal events and to predict future ones. What is...
Interactions among animals and plants are key to understanding seed dispersal, plant regeneration and plant community patterns. These interactions can be dynamic, with changes of species and functional roles across space and time. Despite fluctuations in species abundances and resources over time being the rule in natural communities, most studies approach plant–frugivore interactions as temporally...
While plant–animal interactions occur fundamentally at the individual level, the bulk of research examining the mechanisms that drive interaction patterns has focused on species or population levels. In seed‐dispersal mutualisms between frugivores and plants, little is known about the role of space and individual‐level variation among plants in structuring patterns of frugivory and seed dispersal...
Recording species interactions is one of the main challenges in ecological studies. Frugivory has received much attention for decades as a model for mutualisms among free‐living species, and a variety of methods have been designed and developed for sampling and monitoring plant–frugivore interactions. The diversity of techniques poses an important challenge when comparing, combining or replicating...
Plants produce an enormous diversity of secondary metabolites, but the evolutionary mechanisms that maintain this diversity are still unclear. The interaction diversity hypothesis suggests that complex chemical phenotypes are maintained because different metabolites benefit plants in different pairwise interactions with a diversity of other organisms. In this synthesis, we extend the interaction diversity...
Seed dispersal by frugivorous bird species involves a fine temporal tuning between fruiting plants and birds. However, this interaction may be severely threatened by anthropogenic climate and land‐use change, which may result in phenological mismatches and pervasive ecological consequences for avian communities. In this study, we evaluate changes at long (~40 years) and short‐time (seasonal) spans...
Plant–frugivore networks often display vertical structure in forest communities because of vertical distribution of fruit resources and animal feeding niches on and under trees. However, how vertical stratification of fruit sources and animal feeding niches affect the structure and functioning of frugivory networks has not previously been well studied. We used infrared cameras under trees and direct...
Transgenerational effects enable the transmission of environmental cues from parents to offspring. Adaptive maternal effects are expected to evolve if the maternal (or parental) environment contains information about the environment experienced by offspring. This correlation between maternal and offspring environments should be strongest in plant species with reduced dispersal ability. However, studies...
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