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Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot

Although biological invasions are a common and intensively studied phenomenon, most studies often ignore the biotic interactions that invasive species play in the environment. Here, we evaluated how and why invasive plant species are interconnected within the overall frugivory network of the Brazili...

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Autores principales: Dáttilo, Wesley, Luna, Pedro, Villegas-Patraca, Rafael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181201/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37176902
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12091845
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author Dáttilo, Wesley
Luna, Pedro
Villegas-Patraca, Rafael
author_facet Dáttilo, Wesley
Luna, Pedro
Villegas-Patraca, Rafael
author_sort Dáttilo, Wesley
collection PubMed
description Although biological invasions are a common and intensively studied phenomenon, most studies often ignore the biotic interactions that invasive species play in the environment. Here, we evaluated how and why invasive plant species are interconnected within the overall frugivory network of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, an important global biodiversity hotspot. To do this, we used the recently published Atlantic Frugivory Dataset to build a meta-network (i.e., a general network made of several local networks) that included interactions between 703 native and invasive plant species and 331 frugivore species. Using tools derived from complex network theory and a bootstrap simulation approach, we found that the general structure of the Atlantic Forest frugivory network (i.e., nestedness and modularity) is robust against the entry of invasive plant species. However, we observed that invasive plant species are highly integrated within the frugivory networks, since both native and invasive plant species play similar structural roles (i.e., plant status is not strong enough to explain the interactive roles of plant species). Moreover, we found that plants with smaller fruits and with greater lipid content play a greater interactive role, regardless of their native or invasive status. Our findings highlight the biotic homogenization involving plant–frugivore interactions in the Atlantic Forest and that the impacts and consequences of invasive plant species on native fauna can be anticipated based on the characteristics of their fruits.
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spelling pubmed-101812012023-05-13 Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot Dáttilo, Wesley Luna, Pedro Villegas-Patraca, Rafael Plants (Basel) Article Although biological invasions are a common and intensively studied phenomenon, most studies often ignore the biotic interactions that invasive species play in the environment. Here, we evaluated how and why invasive plant species are interconnected within the overall frugivory network of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, an important global biodiversity hotspot. To do this, we used the recently published Atlantic Frugivory Dataset to build a meta-network (i.e., a general network made of several local networks) that included interactions between 703 native and invasive plant species and 331 frugivore species. Using tools derived from complex network theory and a bootstrap simulation approach, we found that the general structure of the Atlantic Forest frugivory network (i.e., nestedness and modularity) is robust against the entry of invasive plant species. However, we observed that invasive plant species are highly integrated within the frugivory networks, since both native and invasive plant species play similar structural roles (i.e., plant status is not strong enough to explain the interactive roles of plant species). Moreover, we found that plants with smaller fruits and with greater lipid content play a greater interactive role, regardless of their native or invasive status. Our findings highlight the biotic homogenization involving plant–frugivore interactions in the Atlantic Forest and that the impacts and consequences of invasive plant species on native fauna can be anticipated based on the characteristics of their fruits. MDPI 2023-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC10181201/ /pubmed/37176902 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12091845 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dáttilo, Wesley
Luna, Pedro
Villegas-Patraca, Rafael
Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title_full Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title_fullStr Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title_full_unstemmed Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title_short Invasive Plant Species Driving the Biotic Homogenization of Plant-Frugivore Interactions in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
title_sort invasive plant species driving the biotic homogenization of plant-frugivore interactions in the atlantic forest biodiversity hotspot
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181201/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37176902
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12091845
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