Work

Seed co‐occurrence caused by shared frugivores leaves a long‐lasting signal in the spatial co‐occurrence among plants

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Frugivorous animals are key in plant communities, by dispersing seeds of fleshy-fruited plants and being involved in regeneration dynamics. Avian frugivorous forage on several, locally co-occurring fleshy-fruited plant . They co-disseminate seeds, setting the initial spatial template on which subsequent ecological processes operate. Despite this commitment, it remains unknown whether co-disseminated plant species maintain their co-occurrence along plant demographic cycle, reflecting the lasting signal of these interactions with avian frugivores in the plant community. We investigated whether plant species that share bird seed dispersers also co-occur spatially across different life stages, from seed rain to adult individuals. We combined data on seed-rain from nine fleshy-fruited species dispersed by 21 bird species, with spatial co-occurrence patterns among these plant species at sapling and adult stages. We built pairwise matrices showing: the number of frugivorous bird species shared between each pair of plant species, and their spatial co-occurrence at different life stages; seeds (seed–seed), saplings (sapling–sapling and sapling–adult), and adults (adult–adult). We then used structural equation modelling to test whether the level of shared avian frugivores predicts the spatial co-occurrence among adult plants, also assessing the indirect effects of processes occurring at intermediate demographic stages. Our results revealed these effects of frugivore-species sharing during the fruit-removal and seed-dissemination stage on the spatial assembly of adult species. Higher levels of shared avian frugivore increased the co-occurrence among plant species in seed rain, facilitation and adult community, but not within the sapling-sapling interactions. Frugivorous birds drive the co-occurrence among fleshy-fruited plant species, from seed to adult stages, although their influence decreases as plant demographic cycle advances. However, the co-occurrence at adult stages is achieved when adults facilitate saplings. This reinforces the key role of the facilitation in Mediterranean systems, and the role of mutualistic avian frugivores as drivers of plant commmuties

Source: Oikos

DOI: 10.1002/oik.11830