The ability to disperse large seeds, rather than body mass alone, defines the importance of animals in a hyper‐diverse seed dispersal network
Tóm tắt
Large‐bodied animals play irreplaceable roles in seed dispersal, partly due to their capacity to disperse large seeds. Understanding this role at a community level has been limited by the paucity of network studies that include large vertebrates, and the almost complete absence of studies including synzoochoric dispersers. Synzoochoric dispersers can disperse seeds disproportionately large for their body size, potentially overlapping the roles of large‐bodied animals. A comprehensive network, inclusive of large vertebrates and synzoochorous dispersers, is imperative to understand seed dispersal at a community level. Here, we analysed the seed dispersal network of a hyper‐diverse Sundaic forest in Malaysia using local ecological knowledge and including multiple forms of endozoochorous and synzoochorous dispersal. We evaluated the extent to which three disperser traits: body mass, seed‐handling ability (size of the largest seed dispersed) and diet explained the importance of animals in the network. We evaluated dispersers' relative importance using four network metrics—degree of specialisation (nested rank), species strength, within‐module connectivity ( We found that seed‐handling ability had the biggest effect on a disperser's importance, with strong effects on three network metrics (species strength, ecological specialisation and Important dispersers in our network were large‐seed dispersers (e.g. rats, gibbons), large‐bodied animals, in particular the Asian elephant, and animals with frugivorous diets such as hornbills.
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