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      Assessing the impacts of nonrandom seed dispersal by multiple frugivore partners on plant recruitment

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      Ecology
      Wiley-Blackwell

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          Plant diversity in tropical forests: a review of mechanisms of species coexistence

          Evidence concerning mechanisms hypothesized to explain species coexistence in hyper-diverse communities is reviewed for tropical forest plants. Three hypotheses receive strong support. Niche differences are evident from non-random spatial distributions along micro-topographic gradients and from a survivorship-growth tradeoff during regeneration. Host-specific pests reduce recruitment near reproductive adults (the Janzen-Connell effect), and, negative density dependence occurs over larger spatial scales among the more abundant species and may regulate their populations. A fourth hypothesis, that suppressed understory plants rarely come into competition with one another, has not been considered before and has profound implications for species coexistence. These hypotheses are mutually compatible. Infrequent competition among suppressed understory plants, niche differences, and Janzen-Connell effects may facilitate the coexistence of the many rare plant species found in tropical forests while negative density dependence regulates the few most successful and abundant species.
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            Forest fragmentation severs mutualism between seed dispersers and an endemic African tree.

            Because bird species are lost when forests are fragmented into small parcels, trees that depend on fruit-eating birds for seed dispersal may fail to recruit seedlings if dispersal agents disappear. We tested this prediction in rainforest in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, by using the endemic tree Leptonychia usambarensis (Sterculiaceae) and birds that disperse its seeds. We investigated bird abundance and Leptonychia dispersal ecology in fragments isolated for >70 yr, as compared with 3,500 ha of continuous forest. Birds that dispersed Leptonychia seeds in continuous forest were rare or absent in small fragments, where fewer seeds were removed from each tree, far fewer seedlings occurred >10 m from parent trees, and far more seedlings occurred in dense aggregations under parental crowns. Overall, our samples showed that fewer juvenile Leptonychia recruited in fragments than in continuous forest. We provide solid evidence that deficient dispersal due to habitat fragmentation seriously impacts the reproductive cycle of a tropical bird-dispersed tree.
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              Analysis of a hyper-diverse seed dispersal network: modularity and underlying mechanisms.

              Mutualistic interactions involving pollination and ant-plant mutualistic networks typically feature tightly linked species grouped in modules. However, such modularity is infrequent in seed dispersal networks, presumably because research on those networks predominantly includes a single taxonomic animal group (e.g. birds). Herein, for the first time, we examine the pattern of interaction in a network that includes multiple taxonomic groups of seed dispersers, and the mechanisms underlying modularity. We found that the network was nested and modular, with five distinguishable modules. Our examination of the mechanisms underlying such modularity showed that plant and animal trait values were associated with specific modules but phylogenetic effect was limited. Thus, the pattern of interaction in this network is only partially explained by shared evolutionary history. We conclude that the observed modularity emerged by a combination of phylogenetic history and trait convergence of phylogenetically unrelated species, shaped by interactions with particular types of dispersal agents. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Ecology
                Ecology
                Wiley-Blackwell
                0012-9658
                January 2015
                January 2015
                : 96
                : 1
                : 24-30
                Article
                10.1890/14-0684.1
                26236886
                c344edec-6b07-4cc4-99b2-77e531552530
                © 2015

                http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1

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