New synthesis of palm-frugivore interactions

2019-01-01

For his thesis, our former MSc student Gabriel Muñoz has screened >2,200 articles and extracted >1,100 pairwise palm–frugivore interactions from the literature, resulting in 750 unique pairwise interaction records covering 340 frugivores and 126 palms. With this dataset, Gabriel constructed 'meta-networks' for the Neotropics and Afrotropics. The results revealed that interaction diversity and network modularity is larger in the Neotropics than the Afrotropics. Moreover, a positive fruit size–body mass relationship (i.e., functional trait matching) was apparent in the Afrotropics. The paper is published in the Journal of Biogeography and can be accessed here. The dataset is also accessible from DRYAD and GloBI.