Local drivers of the structure of a tropical bird-seed dispersal network

Machado-de-Souza, Tiago; Campos, Ricardo Pamplona; Devoto, Mariano; Varassin, Isabela Galarda

doi:10.1007/s00442-018-4322-0

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The periurban nature of our study site, embedded in a landscape matrix with abundant gray (e.g., buildings, roads, impervious surfaces, and other human-made) infrastructure that can affect the movements of birds (MacGregor-Fors and Escobar-Ibáñez, 2017), could induce changes in foraging behavior. Other factors, such as macroecological and historical vegetation patterns, the robustness of our dataset, the inclusion of detailed bird behavioral data (e.g., pulp-pecking vs. whole-fruit swallowing and the proportion of fruit on each bird's diet), may also be at play (e.g., Machado-de-Souza et al, 2019).…”

Section: Unforeseen Extrinsic Factors and Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to characteristics of fruit availability, the organization of these bird-plant frugivory interactions can be affected by the relationship between a bird's bill and fruit morphology (González-Castro et al, 2015;Bender et al, 2018), the spatiotemporal overlap of species (Ramos-Robles et al, 2016), and the relative abundance of fruits and birds (González-Castro et al, 2015). These variables represent neutral-and niche-based processes that may operate in structuring frugivory networks (Machado-de-Souza et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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In a Neotropical Periurban Park, Fruit Consumption by Birds Seems to Be a Random Process

2021

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Frugivory interactions between birds and fruit-bearing plants are shaped by the abundance of its interacting species, their temporal overlap, the matching of their morphologies, as well as fruit and seed characteristics. Our study evaluates the role of seven factors of fruits and plants in determining the frequency of whole-fruit consumption by birds. We studied the frugivory network of a Neotropical periurban park in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, and quantified relative abundance and phenology of birds and fruit, as well as fruit morphology, chromatic and achromatic contrast, and nutritional content. Using a maximum likelihood approach, we compared the observed interaction network with 62 single- and multiple-variable probabilistic models. Our network is composed of 11 plants and 17 birds involved in 81 frugivory interactions. This network is nested, modular, and relatively specialized. However, the frequency of pairwise interactions is not explained by the variables examined in our probabilistic models and found the null model has the best performance. This indicates that no single predictor or combination of them is better at explaining the observed frequency of pairwise interactions than the null model. The subsequent four top-ranking models, with ΔAIC values < 100, are single-variable ones: carbohydrate content, lipid content, chromatic contrast, and morphology. Two- and three-variable models show the poorest fit to observed data. The lack of a deterministic pattern does not support any of our predictions nor neutral- or niche-based processes shaping the observed pattern of fruit consumption in our interaction network. It may also mean that fruit consumption by birds in this periurban park is a random process. Although our study failed to find a pattern, our work exemplifies how investigations done in urban settings, poor in species and interactions, can help us understand the role of disturbance in the organization of frugivory networks and the processes governing their structure.

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Section: Unforeseen Extrinsic Factors and Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In a Neotropical Periurban Park, Fruit Consumption by Birds Seems to Be a Random Process

2021

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“…The study of species interactions in tropical environments has been largely neglected (but see [8][9][10][11][12]). Most studies of co-occurrences have focused on groups of symbiotic organisms, such as trees and mycorrhizas [13][14][15] and trees and seed dispersers [16,17], and are largely centered around mutualism [18] and parasitism [19][20][21]. However, many other interactions among organisms may play a crucial role in biotic and/or abiotic interactions in the tropics, such as those related to nutrient cycling and organic matter decomposition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Biotic and Abiotic Interactions of Microorganisms in Amazonia through Co-Occurrence Networks and DNA Metabarcoding

et al. 2021

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Species may co-occur due to responses to similar environmental conditions, biological associations, or simply because of coincident geographical distributions. Disentangling patterns of co-occurrence and potential biotic and abiotic interactions is crucial to understand ecosystem function. Here, we used DNA metabarcoding data from litter and mineral soils collected from a longitudinal transect in Amazonia to explore patterns of co-occurrence. We compared data from different Amazonian habitat types, each with a characteristic biota and environmental conditions. These included non-flooded rainforests (terra-firme), forests seasonally flooded by fertile white waters (várzeas) or by unfertile black waters (igapós), and open areas associated with white sand soil (campinas). We ran co-occurrence network analyses based on null models and Spearman correlation for all samples and for each habitat separately. We found that one third of all operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were bacteria and two thirds were eukaryotes. The resulting networks were nevertheless mostly composed of bacteria, with fewer fungi, protists, and metazoans. Considering the functional traits of the OTUs, there is a combination of metabolism modes including respiration and fermentation for bacteria, and a high frequency of saprotrophic fungi (those that feed on dead organic matter), indicating a high turnover of organic material. The organic carbon and base saturation indices were important in the co-occurrences in Amazonian networks, whereas several other soil properties were important for the co-exclusion. Different habitats had similar network properties with some variation in terms of modularity, probably associated with flooding pulse. We show that Amazonian microorganism communities form highly interconnected co-occurrence and co-exclusion networks, which highlights the importance of complex biotic and abiotic interactions in explaining the outstanding biodiversity of the region.

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“…The study of species interactions in tropical environments has been largely neglected (but see [8,9,10,11,12]). Most studies of co-occurrences have focused on groups of symbiotic organisms, such as trees and mycorrhizas [13,14,15] and trees and seed dispersers [16,17], and are largely centered around mutualism [18] and parasitism [19,20,21] . However, many other interactions among organisms may play a crucial role in biotic and/or abiotic interactions in the tropics, such as those related to nutrient cycling and organic matter decomposition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing biotic and abiotic interactions of micro-organisms in Amazonia through co-occurrence networks and DNA metabarcoding

Ritter

Forster

Azevedo³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Species may co-occur due to responses to similar environmental conditions, biological associations, or simply because of coincident geographical distributions. Disentangling patterns of co-occurrence and potential biotic and abiotic interactions is crucial to understand ecosystem function. Here we used DNA metabarcoding data from litter and mineral soils collected from a longitudinal transect in Amazonia to explore patterns of co-occurrence. We compared data from different Amazonian habitat types, each with a characteristic biota and environmental conditions. These included non-flooded rainforests (terra-firme), forests seasonally flooded by fertile white waters (várzeas) or by unfertile black waters (igapós), and open areas associated with white sand soil (campinas). We ran co-occurrence network analyses based on null models and Spearman correlation for all samples and for each habitat separately. We found that one third of all operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were bacteria and two thirds were eukaryotes. The resulting networks were nevertheless mostly composed of bacteria, with fewer fungi, protists, and metazoans. Considering the functional traits of the OTUs, there is a combination of metabolism modes including respiration and fermentation for bacteria, and a high frequency of saprotrophic fungi (those that feed on dead organic matter), indicating a high turnover of organic material. The organic carbon and base saturation indices were important in the co-occurrences in Amazonian networks, whereas several other soil properties were important for the co-exclusion. Different habitats had similar network properties with some variation in terms of modularity, probably associated with flooding pulse. We show that Amazonian micro-organism communities form highly interconnected co-occurrence and co-exclusion networks, which highlights the importance of complex biotic and abiotic interactions in explaining the outstanding biodiversity of the region.

show abstract

Local drivers of the structure of a tropical bird-seed dispersal network

Cited by 22 publications

References 57 publications

In a Neotropical Periurban Park, Fruit Consumption by Birds Seems to Be a Random Process

In a Neotropical Periurban Park, Fruit Consumption by Birds Seems to Be a Random Process

Assessing Biotic and Abiotic Interactions of Microorganisms in Amazonia through Co-Occurrence Networks and DNA Metabarcoding

Assessing biotic and abiotic interactions of micro-organisms in Amazonia through co-occurrence networks and DNA metabarcoding

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