Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 23, Issue 8, Pages 1252-1262Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13529
Keywords
Forest fragmentation; metacommunity; metanetwork; multilayer network; seed dispersal; species roles
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2017YFC0503802, 2016YFC0500105]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31971441, 31770565, 31330013]
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Understanding how biodiversity and interaction networks change across environmental gradients is a major challenge in ecology. We integrated metacommunity and metanetwork perspectives to test species' functional roles in bird-plant frugivory interactions in a fragmented forest landscape in Southwest China, with consequences for seed dispersal. Availability of fruit resources both on and under trees created vertical feeding stratification for frugivorous birds. Bird-plant interactions involving birds feeding only on-the-tree or both on and under-the-tree (shared) had a higher centrality and contributed more to metanetwork organisation than interactions involving birds feeding only under-the-tree. Moreover, bird-plant interactions associated with large-seeded plants disproportionately contributed to metanetwork organisation and centrality. Consequently, on-the-tree and shared birds contributed more to metanetwork organisation whereas under-the-tree birds were more involved in local processes. We would expect that species' roles in the metanetwork will translate into different conservation values for maintaining functioning of seed-dispersal networks.
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