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Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem

BACKGROUND: Animals are important vectors for the dispersal of a wide variety of plant species, and thus play a key role in maintaining the health and biodiversity of natural ecosystems. On oceanic islands, flying-foxes are often the only seed dispersers or pollinators. However, many flying-fox popu...

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Autores principales: Todd, Christopher M., Westcott, David A., Martin, John M., Rose, Karrie, McKeown, Adam, Hall, Jane, Welbergen, Justin A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8996557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35410304
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00315-8
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author Todd, Christopher M.
Westcott, David A.
Martin, John M.
Rose, Karrie
McKeown, Adam
Hall, Jane
Welbergen, Justin A.
author_facet Todd, Christopher M.
Westcott, David A.
Martin, John M.
Rose, Karrie
McKeown, Adam
Hall, Jane
Welbergen, Justin A.
author_sort Todd, Christopher M.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Animals are important vectors for the dispersal of a wide variety of plant species, and thus play a key role in maintaining the health and biodiversity of natural ecosystems. On oceanic islands, flying-foxes are often the only seed dispersers or pollinators. However, many flying-fox populations are currently in decline, particularly those of insular species, and this has consequences for the ecological services they provide. Knowledge of the drivers and the scale of flying-fox movements is important in determining the ecological roles that flying-foxes play on islands. This information is also useful for understanding the potential long-term consequences for forest dynamics resulting from population declines or extinction, and so can aid in the development of evidence-based ecological management strategies. To these ends, we examined the foraging movements, floral resource use, and social interactions of the Critically Endangered Christmas Island flying-fox (Pteropus natalis). METHODS: Utilization distributions, using movement-based kernel estimates (MBKE) were generated to determine nightly foraging movements of GPS-tracked P. natalis (n = 24). Generalized linear models (GLMs), linear mixed-effect models (LMMs), and Generalized linear mixed-effects model (GLMMs) were constructed to explain how intrinsic factors (body mass, skeletal size, and sex) affected the extent of foraging movements. In addition, we identified pollen collected from facial and body swabs of P. natalis (n = 216) to determine foraging resource use. Direct observations (n = 272) of foraging P. natalis enabled us to assess the various behaviors used to defend foraging resources. RESULTS: Larger P. natalis individuals spent more time foraging and less time traveling between foraging patches, traveled shorter nightly distances, and had smaller overall foraging ranges than smaller conspecifics. Additionally, larger individuals visited a lower diversity of floral resources. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that smaller P. natalis individuals are the primary vectors of long-distance dispersal of pollen and digested seeds in this species, providing a vital mechanism for maintaining the flow of plant genetic diversity across Christmas Island. Overall, our study highlights the need for more holistic research approaches that incorporate population demographics when assessing a species’ ecological services. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-022-00315-8.
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spelling pubmed-89965572022-04-12 Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem Todd, Christopher M. Westcott, David A. Martin, John M. Rose, Karrie McKeown, Adam Hall, Jane Welbergen, Justin A. Mov Ecol Research BACKGROUND: Animals are important vectors for the dispersal of a wide variety of plant species, and thus play a key role in maintaining the health and biodiversity of natural ecosystems. On oceanic islands, flying-foxes are often the only seed dispersers or pollinators. However, many flying-fox populations are currently in decline, particularly those of insular species, and this has consequences for the ecological services they provide. Knowledge of the drivers and the scale of flying-fox movements is important in determining the ecological roles that flying-foxes play on islands. This information is also useful for understanding the potential long-term consequences for forest dynamics resulting from population declines or extinction, and so can aid in the development of evidence-based ecological management strategies. To these ends, we examined the foraging movements, floral resource use, and social interactions of the Critically Endangered Christmas Island flying-fox (Pteropus natalis). METHODS: Utilization distributions, using movement-based kernel estimates (MBKE) were generated to determine nightly foraging movements of GPS-tracked P. natalis (n = 24). Generalized linear models (GLMs), linear mixed-effect models (LMMs), and Generalized linear mixed-effects model (GLMMs) were constructed to explain how intrinsic factors (body mass, skeletal size, and sex) affected the extent of foraging movements. In addition, we identified pollen collected from facial and body swabs of P. natalis (n = 216) to determine foraging resource use. Direct observations (n = 272) of foraging P. natalis enabled us to assess the various behaviors used to defend foraging resources. RESULTS: Larger P. natalis individuals spent more time foraging and less time traveling between foraging patches, traveled shorter nightly distances, and had smaller overall foraging ranges than smaller conspecifics. Additionally, larger individuals visited a lower diversity of floral resources. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that smaller P. natalis individuals are the primary vectors of long-distance dispersal of pollen and digested seeds in this species, providing a vital mechanism for maintaining the flow of plant genetic diversity across Christmas Island. Overall, our study highlights the need for more holistic research approaches that incorporate population demographics when assessing a species’ ecological services. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-022-00315-8. BioMed Central 2022-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8996557/ /pubmed/35410304 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00315-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Todd, Christopher M.
Westcott, David A.
Martin, John M.
Rose, Karrie
McKeown, Adam
Hall, Jane
Welbergen, Justin A.
Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title_full Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title_fullStr Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title_full_unstemmed Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title_short Body-size dependent foraging strategies in the Christmas Island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
title_sort body-size dependent foraging strategies in the christmas island flying-fox: implications for seed and pollen dispersal within a threatened island ecosystem
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8996557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35410304
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00315-8
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