10.5061/DRYAD.R3D70M9
Simmons, Benno I.
University of Cambridge
Sutherland, William J.
University of Cambridge
Dicks, Lynn V.
University of East Anglia
University of Cambridge
Albrecht, Jörg
Philipp University of Marburg
Farwig, Nina
Philipp University of Marburg
Garcia, Daniel
University of Oviedo
Jordano, Pedro
University of Cambridge
González-Varo, Juan P.
University of Cambridge
Data from: Moving from frugivory to seed dispersal: incorporating the
functional outcomes of interactions in plant-frugivore networks
Dryad
dataset
2019
frugivorous birds
ecological networks
antagonism
fleshy fruits
pulp pecking
seed predation
2019-03-26T00:00:00Z
2019-03-26T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12831
119925 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
1.There is growing interest in understanding the functional outcomes of
species interactions in ecological networks. For many mutualistic
networks, including pollination and seed dispersal networks, interactions
are generally sampled by recording animal foraging visits to plants.
However, these visits may not reflect actual pollination or seed dispersal
events, despite these typically being the ecological processes of
interest. 2.Frugivorous animals can act as seed dispersers, by swallowing
entire fruits and dispersing their seeds, or as pulp peckers or seed
predators, by pecking fruits to consume pieces of pulp or seeds. These
processes have opposing consequences for plant reproductive success.
Therefore, equating visitation with seed dispersal could lead to biased
inferences about the ecology, evolution and conservation of seed dispersal
mutualisms. 3.Here we use natural history information on the functional
outcomes of pairwise bird‐plant interactions to examine changes in the
structure of seven European plant‐frugivore visitation networks after
non‐mutualistic interactions (pulp‐pecking and seed predation) have been
removed. Following existing knowledge of the contrasting structures of
mutualistic and antagonistic networks, we hypothesised a number of changes
following interaction removal, such as increased nestedness and lower
specialisation. 4.Non‐mutualistic interactions with pulp peckers and seed
predators occurred in all seven networks, accounting for 21–48% of all
interactions and 6–24% of total interaction frequency. When
non‐mutualistic interactions were removed, there were significant
increases in network‐level metrics such as connectance and nestedness,
while robustness decreased. These changes were generally small, homogenous
and driven by decreases in network size. Conversely, changes in
species‐level metrics were more variable and sometimes large, with
significant decreases in plant degree, interaction frequency,
specialisation and resilience to animal extinctions, and significant
increases in frugivore species strength. 5.Visitation data can
overestimate the actual frequency of seed dispersal services in
plant‐frugivore networks. We show here that incorporating natural history
information on the functions of species interactions can bring us closer
to understanding the processes and functions operating in ecological
communities. Our categorical approach lays the foundation for future work
quantifying functional interaction outcomes along a mutualism–antagonism
continuum, as documented in other frugivore faunas.
Classification of European bird-plant frugivore interactionsThe file
contains classifications of European bird-plant frugivore interactions as
seed dispersal, pulp pecking or seed predation based on literature sources
or (when no sources were available) inferred based on interactions with
similar plant species or congeneric species.interaction_classification.csv
Europe