A pantropical assessment of vertebrate physical damage to forest seedlings and the effects of defaunation
A pantropical assessment of vertebrate physical damage to forest seedlings and the effects of defaunation
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脊椎动物对森林幼苗的物理损害和动物区系丧失影响的泛热带评估
DOI：
10.1016/j.gecco.2017.06.001
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发表时间：
2017
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
A. Granados
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cooper Rosin;J. Poulsen;Varun Swamy;A. Granados
许多形成热带森林植物群落的力量都是通过与动物的相互作用来促进的，这些相互作用可以促进或抑制植物在个体发育阶段的繁殖和生存。狩猎引起的动物群落退化可以破坏这些相互作用，改变树木的补充，森林结构和碳储存，在种子和幼苗阶段具有强烈的影响。迄今为止的研究主要集中在如何改变显着的相互作用（特别是种子传播）影响植物物种和社区，而同时中断较少研究的过程可能会产生相反的影响。由于对非营养相互作用的了解特别有限，例如脊椎动物践踏、生根和挖掘对幼苗的物理损害，因此仍然很难预测热带森林植物群落的破坏结果。我们在三个主要热带森林地区-新热带（秘鲁）、非洲热带（加蓬）和印度-马来热带（马来西亚婆罗洲）-的18个完整和受干扰的地点建立了1800个人工幼苗，以将非营养脊椎动物的物理损害与幼苗死亡的其他原因（食草动物、病原体、非生物干燥等）隔离开来，并了解其对完整森林和受到人为干扰的森林的影响。我们发现，脊椎动物的物理损害是整个热带森林的一种持续力量，狩猎显着改变了其强度，狩猎与未受破坏的地点相比，损害减少了70%，导致人工幼苗存活率增加了350%。我们的研究结果揭示了一个未充分研究的机制，可能有助于幼苗存活，干密度和植物群落组成的变化，在热带森林受到狩猎。
Many of the forces that shape tropical forest plant communities are facilitated by interactions with animals, which can either promote or inhibit plant reproduction and survival across ontogenetic stages. Hunting-induced defaunation can disrupt these interactions, altering tree recruitment, forest structure, and carbon storage, with strong effects at the seed and seedling stages. Research to date has largely focused on how changes to prominent interactions (especially seed dispersal) affect plant species and communities, while concurrent disruptions to less-studied processes may have opposing effects. With a particularly limited understanding of non-trophic interactions – such as physical damage to seedlings by vertebrate trampling, rooting, and digging – it remains difficult to predict the outcomes of defaunation for tropical forest plant communities. We established 1800 artificial seedlings in 18 intact and disturbed sites across the three main tropical forest regions – the Neotropics (Peru), the Afrotropics (Gabon) and the Indo-Malayan tropics (Malaysian Borneo) – to isolate non-trophic vertebrate physical damage from other causes of seedling mortality (herbivory, pathogens, abiotic desiccation, etc.), and to understand its effects in intact and anthropogenically-disturbed forests. We found that vertebrate physical damage is a consistent force in forests across the tropics, and that hunting significantly alters its strength, with a ∼70% decrease in damage in hunted vs. intact sites that resulted in a ∼3.5-fold (350%) increase in artificial seedling survival. Our results reveal an understudied mechanism that may contribute to changes in seedling survival, stem density, and plant community composition in tropical forests subjected to hunting.