Effects of frugivore species pool and seed size on the diversity and functional composition of frugivores visiting fruiting trees

Abstract

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in seed dispersal remains understudied despite its critical role in maintaining plant diversity in the tropics. Field studies on this relationship are often confounded by environmental and phylogenetic variations across species richness gradients. We examined how overall avian frugivore species richness at a site influenced the frugivore richness, visitation rates and functional composition of two key effect traits (beak width and hand-wing index) on fruiting trees. Across six sites in tropical Asia, spanning a sevenfold gradient in frugivore species richness but with similar forest types and phylogenetically nested frugivore communities, we recorded 34 014 interactions between 138 avian frugivores and 131 woody plant species. Our results provide some support for the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship, as higher overall frugivore species richness increased the number of frugivore species visiting individual fruiting trees but not the functional composition of frugivores. Seed size had a stronger influence on the frugivore species richness, visitation rates and the beak size of visiting frugivores, highlighting the dominant role of morphological trait matching in influencing plant-frugivore interactions. Our findings suggest functional redundancy in certain aspects of seed dispersal effectiveness due to density compensation and the presence of key seed disperser lineages in species-poor sites.