Seed dispersal in both space and time is necessary for plant diversity maintenance in fragmented landscapes

Oikos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 127 (6) ◽  
pp. 780-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Plue ◽  
Sara A. O. Cousins
2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (9) ◽  
pp. 4464-4470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Harrison ◽  
Marko J. Spasojevic ◽  
Daijiang Li

Climate strongly shapes plant diversity over large spatial scales, with relatively warm and wet (benign, productive) regions supporting greater numbers of species. Unresolved aspects of this relationship include what causes it, whether it permeates to community diversity at smaller spatial scales, whether it is accompanied by patterns in functional and phylogenetic diversity as some hypotheses predict, and whether it is paralleled by climate-driven changes in diversity over time. Here, studies of Californian plants are reviewed and new analyses are conducted to synthesize climate–diversity relationships in space and time. Across spatial scales and organizational levels, plant diversity is maximized in more productive (wetter) climates, and these consistent spatial relationships are mirrored in losses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity over time during a recent climatic drying trend. These results support the tolerance and climatic niche conservatism hypotheses for climate–diversity relationships, and suggest there is some predictability to future changes in diversity in water-limited climates.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. e89346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo González-Zamora ◽  
Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez ◽  
Federico Escobar ◽  
Matthias Rös ◽  
Ken Oyama ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masashi Soga ◽  
Takayuki Kawahara ◽  
Kenji Fukuyama ◽  
Katsuhiko Sayama ◽  
Tetsuya Kato ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 113 (11/12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph D.M. White ◽  
Jeremy J. Midgley

Seed dispersal allows successive generations of plants to be mobile in space and time. Heeria argentea’s unusual fruit and its ubiquity in extremely rocky habitats, suggests that this tree requires a specialist disperser. We therefore investigated the dispersal ecology of H. argentea and Hartogiella schinoides. We found M. namaquensis rapidly removed H. argentea and H. schinoides fruits, moving them short distances within and between rock outcrops, and consumed only the pericarps. Birds were observed consuming H. schinoides, but not H. argentea fruits, suggesting M. namaquensis is its sole, specialist disperser. Most H. argentea seeds (65%) with removed pericarps germinated successfully, while intact fruits did not. We show rock outcrops represent fire refugia, allowing H. argentea trees to grow to large sizes, with small stems and a co-occurring, wind-dispersed tree, Widdringtonia nodiflora found away from these sites. This rodent–tree mutualism is perhaps the clearest global example of directed dispersal and shows that these endemic trees are highly adapted for survival in the southwestern Cape habitat and are not tropical relicts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 20190264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan P. González-Varo ◽  
Sarah Díaz-García ◽  
Juan M. Arroyo ◽  
Pedro Jordano

Juvenile animals generally disperse from their birthplace to their future breeding territories. In fragmented landscapes, habitat-specialist species must disperse through the anthropogenic matrix where remnant habitats are embedded. Here, we test the hypothesis that dispersing juvenile frugivores leave a footprint in the form of seed deposition through the matrix of fragmented landscapes. We focused on the Sardinian warbler ( Sylvia melanocephala ), a resident frugivorous passerine. We used data from field sampling of bird-dispersed seeds in the forest and matrix of a fragmented landscape, subsequent disperser identification through DNA-barcoding analysis, and data from a national bird-ringing programme. Seed dispersal by Sardinian warblers was confined to the forest most of the year, but warblers contributed a peak of seed-dispersal events in the matrix between July and October, mainly attributable to dispersing juveniles. Our study uniquely connects animal and plant dispersal, demonstrating that juveniles of habitat-specialist frugivores can provide mobile-link functions transiently, but in a seasonally predictable way.


2011 ◽  
Vol 278 (1716) ◽  
pp. 2257-2264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Lenz ◽  
Wolfgang Fiedler ◽  
Tanja Caprano ◽  
Wolfgang Friedrichs ◽  
Bernhard H. Gaese ◽  
...  

Frugivorous birds provide important ecosystem services by transporting seeds of fleshy fruited plants. It has been assumed that seed-dispersal kernels generated by these animals are generally leptokurtic, resulting in little dispersal among habitat fragments. However, little is known about the seed-dispersal distribution generated by large frugivorous birds in fragmented landscapes. We investigated movement and seed-dispersal patterns of trumpeter hornbills ( Bycanistes bucinator ) in a fragmented landscape in South Africa. Novel GPS loggers provide high-quality location data without bias against recording long-distance movements. We found a very weakly bimodal seed-dispersal distribution with potential dispersal distances up to 14.5 km. Within forest, the seed-dispersal distribution was unimodal with an expected dispersal distance of 86 m. In the fragmented agricultural landscape, the distribution was strongly bimodal with peaks at 18 and 512 m. Our results demonstrate that seed-dispersal distributions differed when birds moved in different habitat types. Seed-dispersal distances in fragmented landscapes show that transport among habitat patches is more frequent than previously assumed, allowing plants to disperse among habitat patches and to track the changing climatic conditions.


Ecology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (11) ◽  
pp. 2444-2453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Salazar ◽  
Detlev H. Kelm ◽  
Robert J. Marquis

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 484-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carine Emer ◽  
Mauro Galetti ◽  
Marco A. Pizo ◽  
Paulo R. Guimarães ◽  
Suelen Moraes ◽  
...  

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