Frugivore-fruit size relationships between palms and mammals reveal past and future defaunation impacts

Lim, Jun Ying; Svenning, Jens‐Christian; Göldel, Bastian; Faurby, Søren; Kissling, W. Daniel

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18530-5

Cited by 50 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…1.2 (Faurby and Svenning 2015, Faurby et al 2018). Our use of present natural ranges as proxies for ‘historical' distributions is similar to that of Belote et al (2020) and Lim et al (2020), but we employed a selection filter based on how these ranges were derived. In fact, present natural ranges represent species potential distributions in the absence of human modification, and they have been derived using a variety of techniques to estimate pre‐impact distributions of each species.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammals

et al. 2021

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The breadth of a species' climatic niche is an important ecological trait that allows adaptation to climate change, but human activities often reduce realised niche breadth by impacting species distributions. Some life‐history traits, such as dispersal ability and reproductive speed, allow species to cope with both human impact and climate change. But how do these traits interact with human pressure to determine niche change? Here we investigate the patterns and drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of 258 terrestrial mammal species. Our goal is to disentangle the impacts of human land use, climate change and life history. We quantified the past and present climatic niches of each species by considering past climatic conditions (Mid Holocene) within their pre‐human impact distributions, and current climatic conditions within the current distributions. Depending on the difference between past and current niche, we defined four categories of change: ‘shrink', ‘shift', ‘stable' and ‘expand'. We found over half of the species in our sample have undergone niche shrink, while only one in six retained a stable niche. Climate change and distribution change were the strongest correlates of species niche change, followed by biogeography, anthropogenic land use and life‐history traits. Factors that increased the probability of niche shrink included: overall climatic instability, reduction in distribution range, historical land use, large body mass and long weaning age. Species with these characteristics might require interventions that facilitate natural dispersal or assisted colonisation to survive rapidly changing climates.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammals

et al. 2021

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“…Studies of megafruit dispersal by large-bodied animals have been conducted in ecosystems around the world, including savannas and drier forest patches (Campos-Arceiz et al, 2008;Sekar and Sukumar, 2013;Sridhara et al, 2016) and in tropical forests (Kitamura et al, 2007;Harich et al, 2016). Several recent studies have shown that the megafaunal extinctions caused a loss or complete termination of seed-dispersal processes in many arborescent plants (Guimarães et al, 2008;Galetti et al, 2017;McConkey et al, 2018;Onstein et al, 2018;Pires et al, 2018;Lim et al, 2020). FIGURE 3 | A timeline showing key coevolutionary processes that created mutualistic relationships between large mammals and crop and weed progenitors.…”

Section: Large Fleshy Fruiting Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Onstein et al ( 2018 ) link megafaunal extinctions to an evolutionary decrease in the size of the fruits produced across the Arecaceae family and high rates of species extinctions throughout the Holocene (Lim et al, 2020 ). Purugganan ( 2019 ) used date palms ( Phoenix spp.)…”

Section: Lost Seed-dispersal Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The introduction of new invasive species and domesticated herbivores to Madagascar, including horses, may further serve as surrogate dispersers (Vavra et al, 2007 ). The observations made in Madagascar are not unique, the loss of frugivores has led to a corresponding decrease in large-fruiting arborescent species around the world (Peres and Palacios, 2007 ; Stoner et al, 2007 ; Terborgh et al, 2008 ; Beaune et al, 2013 ; Tarszisz et al, 2018 ; Lim et al, 2020 ). Likewise, “rewilding” exercises, the practice of introducing animals with similar ecosystem functions as those lost during late Pleistocene or Holocene extinction events, serve as field studies to test theories relating to seed-dispersal mutualisms (Donlan, 2005 ; Griffiths et al, 2011 ).…”

Section: Lost Seed-dispersal Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication

et al. 2021

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Megafaunal extinctions are recurring events that cause evolutionary ripples, as cascades of secondary extinctions and shifting selective pressures reshape ecosystems. Megafaunal browsers and grazers are major ecosystem engineers, they: keep woody vegetation suppressed; are nitrogen cyclers; and serve as seed dispersers. Most angiosperms possess sets of physiological traits that allow for the fixation of mutualisms with megafauna; some of these traits appear to serve as exaptation (preadaptation) features for farming. As an easily recognized example, fleshy fruits are, an exaptation to agriculture, as they evolved to recruit a non-human disperser. We hypothesize that the traits of rapid annual growth, self-compatibility, heavy investment in reproduction, high plasticity (wide reaction norms), and rapid evolvability were part of an adaptive syndrome for megafaunal seed dispersal. We review the evolutionary importance that megafauna had for crop and weed progenitors and discuss possible ramifications of their extinction on: (1) seed dispersal; (2) population dynamics; and (3) habitat loss. Humans replaced some of the ecological services that had been lost as a result of late Quaternary extinctions and drove rapid evolutionary change resulting in domestication.

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“…In the long-term, it leads to the functional erosion of plant traits related to reproduction that provide food resources for animals (Marcilio-Silva et al, 2016;Rocha-Santos et al, 2020). The loss of functional diversity of plant community might influence the availability and variability of floral, fruit, and seed resources for the associated fauna, thus increasing their vulnerability to future disturbances (Magnago et al, 2014;Pessoa et al, 2017a,b;Lim et al, 2020;Rocha-Santos et al, 2020). Specifically, in forest fragments embedded in highly deforested landscapes, the vegetation homogenization triggers a decrease in fruit biomass production and fruit quality (Pessoa et al, 2017a,b), possibly disrupting animal-plant interactions fundamental for the provision of ecological services (e.g., pollination and seed dispersal) (Mitchell et al, 2015;Valiente-Banuet et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deforestation Simplifies Understory Bird Seed-Dispersal Networks in Human-Modified Landscapes

et al. 2021

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Global biodiversity is threatened by land-use changes through human activities. This is mainly due to the conversion of continuous forests into forest fragments surrounded by anthropogenic matrices. In general, sensitive species are lost while species adapted to disturbances succeed in altered environments. However, whether the interactions performed by the persisting species are also modified, and how it scales up to the network level throughout the landscape are virtually unknown in most tropical hotspots of biodiversity. Here we evaluated how landscape predictors (forest cover, total core area, edge density, inter-patch isolation) and local characteristics (fruit availability, vegetation complexity) affected understory birds seed-dispersal networks in 19 forest fragments along the hyperdiverse but highly depauperate northeast distribution of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Also, our sampled sites were distributed in two regions with contrasting land cover changes. We used mist nets to obtain samples of understory bird food contents to identify the plant species consumed and dispersed by them. We estimated network complexity on the basis of the number of interactions, links per species, interaction evenness, and modularity. Our findings showed that the number of interactions increased with the amount of forest cover, and it was significantly lower in the more deforested region. None of the other evaluated parameters were affected by any other landscape or local predictors. We also observed a lack of significant network structure compared to null models, which we attribute to a pervasive impoverishment of bird and plant communities in these highly modified landscapes. Our results demonstrate the importance of forest cover not only to maintain species diversity but also their respective mutualistic relationships, which are the bases for ecosystem functionality, forest regeneration and the provision of ecological services.

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Frugivore-fruit size relationships between palms and mammals reveal past and future defaunation impacts

Cited by 50 publications

References 95 publications

Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammals

Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammals

Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication

Deforestation Simplifies Understory Bird Seed-Dispersal Networks in Human-Modified Landscapes

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