The important role of animal social status in vertebrate seed dispersal
The important role of animal social status in vertebrate seed dispersal
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DOI：
10.1111/ele.13988
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发表时间：
2022-03-02
期刊：
影响因子：
8.8
通讯作者：
Orrock, John L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bartel, Savannah L.;Orrock, John L.
种子传播直接影响植物的建立、基因流和适合度。因此，了解种子传播模式对于了解植物生态学和进化以及应对灭绝和全球变化的挑战至关重要。我们理解传播的能力是有限的，因为种子可能是由多种媒介传播的，而这些媒介的有效性在物种之间和物种内部都是高度可变的。我们提供了一个新的框架，将种子传播与动物的社会地位联系起来，这是行为的一个关键组成部分。由于社会地位影响个人资源的获取和移动，它提供了一个关键的链接到两个因素，决定种子传播：传播的种子数量和传播的空间模式。当社会地位影响个体的栖息地利用时，社会地位可能对扩散后的种子存活和补充产生不受重视的影响。因此，环境的变化，如选择性收获和城市化，影响动物的社会结构可能有未被重视的种子传播的后果。这个框架强调了这些令人兴奋的新假设，将环境变化，社会结构和种子传播联系起来。通过概述测试这些假设的实验方法，我们希望促进各种植物-动物网络的研究，这可能会发现新出现的热点或种子传播的显着下降。
Seed dispersal directly affects plant establishment, gene flow and fitness. Understanding patterns in seed dispersal is, therefore, fundamental to understanding plant ecology and evolution, as well as addressing challenges of extinction and global change. Our ability to understand dispersal is limited because seeds may be dispersed by multiple agents, and the effectiveness of these agents can be highly variable both among and within species. We provide a novel framework that links seed dispersal to animal social status, a key component of behaviour. Because social status affects individual resource access and movement, it provides a critical link to two factors that determine seed dispersal: the quantity of seeds dispersed and the spatial patterns of dispersal. Social status may have unappreciated effects on post-dispersal seed survival and recruitment when social status affects individual habitat use. Hence, environmental changes, such as selective harvesting and urbanisation, that affect animal social structure may have unappreciated consequences for seed dispersal. This framework highlights these exciting new hypotheses linking environmental change, social structure and seed dispersal. By outlining experimental approaches to test these hypotheses, we hope to facilitate studies across a wide diversity of plant-animal networks, which may uncover emerging hotspots or significant declines in seed dispersal.