ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Evolutionary cascades induced by large frugivores.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Frugivory and seed dispersal in a hyperdiverse plant clade and its role as a keystone resource for the Neotropical fauna.Annals of botany · 2021Pooled it
- Climate modulation of phylogenetic and functional constraints on fruit volume: A case study of Chinese angiosperms.Plant diversity · 2026Article
- Leaf-Fruit Trait Decoupling Along Environmental Gradients in Tropical Cryptocaryeae (Lauraceae).Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Airborne eDNA Reveals Resource-Based Assembly of Frugivorous Vertebrates.Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- Fossil evidence of proboscidean frugivory and its lasting impact on South American ecosystems.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Why do understoreyEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Ecological function maintained despite mesomammal declines.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Effects of temperature gradient on functional fruit traits: an elevation-for-temperature approach.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- In the eye of the beholder: Is color classification consistent among human observers?Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Cloning capacity helps seeds ofEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Fruit odorants mediate co-specialization in a multispecies plant-animal mutualism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Odor of achlorophyllous plants' seeds drives seed-dispersing ants.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Seed dispersers shape the pulp nutrients of fleshy-fruited plants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Signal and reward in wild fleshy fruits: Does fruit scent predict nutrient content?Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Small size does not restrain frugivory and seed dispersal across the evolutionary radiation of Galápagos lava lizards.Current zoology · 2019Article
- Article
- Fruit scent as an evolved signal to primate seed dispersal.Science advances · 2018Article
- Frugivores and the evolution of fruit colour.Biology letters · 2018Article
- The evolution of fruit colour: phylogeny, abiotic factors and the role of mutualists.Scientific reports · 2018Article
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1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Large, fruit-eating vertebrates have been lost from many of the world's ecosystems. The ecological consequences of this defaunation can be severe, but the evolutionary consequences are nearly unknown because it remains unclear whether frugivores exert strong selection on fruit traits. I assessed the macroevolution of fruit traits in response to variation in the diversity and size of seed-dispersing vertebrates. Across the Indo-Malay Archipelago, many of the same plant lineages have been exposed to very different assemblages of seed-dispersing vertebrates. Phylogenetic analysis of >400 plant species in 41 genera and five families revealed that average fruit size tracks the taxonomic and functional diversity of frugivorous birds and mammals. Fruit size was 40.2-46.5% smaller in the Moluccas and Sulawesi (respectively), with relatively depauperate assemblages of mostly small-bodied animals, than in the Sunda Region (Borneo, Sumatra, and Peninsular Malaysia), with a highly diverse suite of large and small animals. Fruit color, however, was unrelated to vertebrate diversity or to the representation of birds versus mammals in the frugivore assemblage. Overhunting of large animals, nearly ubiquitous in tropical forests, could strongly alter selection pressures on plants, resulting in widespread, although trait-specific, morphologic changes.
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