Generalist Species Have a Central Role In a Highly Diverse Plant-Frugivore Network

No hay miniatura disponible

Fecha

2016-05-01

Director de tesis/Asesor

Título de la revista

ISSN de la revista

Título del volumen

Publicador

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Editor

Compartir

Resumen

Analysis of plant-frugivore interactions provides a quantitative framework for integrating community structure and ecosystem function in terms of how the roles and attributes of individual species contribute to network structure and resilience. In this study, we used centrality metrics to rank and detect the most important species in a mutualistic network of fruit-eating birds and plants in a cloud forest in the Colombian Andes. We identified a central core of ten bird and seven plant species in a network of 135 species that perform dual roles as local hubs and connectors. The birds were mostly large forest frugivores, such as cracids, cotingas, and toucans, which consume fruits of all sizes. The plants were species of intermediate successional stages with small- to medium-sized seeds that persist in mature forest or forest borders (e.g., Miconia, Cecropia, Ficus). We found the resilience of our network depends on super-generalist species, because their elimination makes the network more prone to disassemble than random extinctions, potentially disrupting seed-dispersal processes. At our study site, extirpation of large frugivores has already been documented, and if this continues, the network might collapse despite its high diversity. Our results suggest that generalist species play critical roles in ecosystem function and should be incorporated into conservation and monitoring programs. © 2016 The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.

Descripción

Palabras clave

Citación

ARK

ARXIV

Barcode

Bibcode

EAN13

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.12290

EISSN

GOVDOC

Handle

IGSN

ISBN

ISMN

ISSN

0006-3606

ISTC

ISSN-L

LSID

Local

Other

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84964558112&doi=10.1111%2fbtp.12290&partnerID=40&md5=3cadf3237d9e338cd3adc62b80f431cb

OLIB

PISSN

PMID

PURL

SICI

Slug

SoundCloud

UPC

URL

URN

YouTube

WOS