ArticleScientific reports2017
Fungal infestation boosts fruit aroma and fruit removal by mammals and birds.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- A comprehensive, multi-method dataset of plant-frugivore interactions in a Mediterranean hotspot.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Review
- Community Diversity of Fungi Carried by Four Common Woodpeckers in Heilongjiang Province, China.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Fungal Endophytes: Discovering What Lies within Some of Canada's Oldest and Most Resilient Grapevines.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Seed dispersal syndrome predicts ethanol concentration of fruits in a tropical dry forest.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Hummingbird ingestion of low-concentration ethanol within artificial nectar.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Bacterial detoxification of plant defence secondary metabolites mediates the interaction between a shrub and frugivorous birds.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The Promise of an Evolutionary Perspective of Alcohol Consumption.Neuroscience insights · 2023Review
- Fruit scent as an honest signal for fruit quality.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Dietary ethanol ingestion by free-ranging spider monkeysRoyal Society open science · 2022Article
- Human Evolution and Dietary Ethanol.Nutrients · 2021Review
- Can gene editing reduce postharvest waste and loss of fruit, vegetables, and ornamentals?Horticulture research · 2021Review
- Sweet tooth: Elephants detect fruit sugar levels based on scent alone.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Microbial Co-Occurrence in Floral Nectar Affects Metabolites and Attractiveness to a Generalist Pollinator.Journal of chemical ecology · 2020Article
- Olfactory sensitivity for mold-associated odorants in CD-1 mice and spider monkeys.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2018Article
- Strong among population variation in frugivory strength by functional diverse frugivores: a 'reciprocal translocation' experiment.Oecologia · 2018Article
- Genomic Analysis of Terpene Synthase Family and Functional Characterization of Seven Sesquiterpene Synthases fromFrontiers in plant science · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For four decades, an influential hypothesis has posited that competition for food resources between microbes and vertebrates selects for microbes to alter these resources in ways that make them unpalatable to vertebrates. We chose an understudied cross kingdom interaction to experimentally evaluate the effect of fruit infection by fungi on both vertebrate (mammals and birds) fruit preferences and on ecologically relevant fruit traits (volatile compounds, toughness, etc). Our well-replicated field experiments revealed that, in contrast to previous studies, frugivorous mammals and birds consistently preferred infested over intact fruits. This was concordant with the higher level of attractive volatiles (esters, ethanol) in infested fruits. This investigation suggests that vertebrate frugivores, fleshy-fruited plants, and microbes form a tripartite interaction in which each part could interact positively with the other two (e.g. both orange seeds and fungal spores are likely dispersed by mammals). Such a mutualistic view of these complex interactions is opposed to the generalized idea of competition between frugivorous vertebrates and microorganisms. Thus, this research provides a new perspective on the widely accepted plant evolutionary dilemma to make fruits attractive to mutualistic frugivores while unattractive to presumed antagonistic microbes that constrain seed dispersal.
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