Uncoupling the effects of seed predation and seed dispersal by granivorous ants on plant population dynamics
Arnan, Xavier (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Rodrigo Domínguez, Anselm (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Molowny-Horas, Roberto (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Retana Alumbreros, Javier (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)

Data:	2012
Resum:	Secondary seed dispersal is an important plant-animal interaction, which is central to understanding plant population and community dynamics. Very little information is still available on the effects of dispersal on plant demography and, particularly, for ant-seed dispersal interactions. As many other interactions, seed dispersal by animals involves costs (seed predation) and benefits (seed dispersal), the balance of which determines the outcome of the interaction. Separate quantification of each of them is essential in order to understand the effects of this interaction. To address this issue, we have successfully separated and analyzed the costs and benefits of seed dispersal by seed-harvesting ants on the plant population dynamics of three shrub species with different traits. To that aim a stochastic, spatially-explicit individually-based simulation model has been implemented based on actual data sets. The results from our simulation model agree with theoretical models of plant response dependent on seed dispersal, for one plant species, and ant-mediated seed predation, for another one. In these cases, model predictions were close to the observed values at field. Nonetheless, these ecological processes did not affect in anyway a third species, for which the model predictions were far from the observed values. This indicates that the balance between costs and benefits associated to secondary seed dispersal is clearly related to specific traits. This study is one of the first works that analyze tradeoffs of secondary seed dispersal on plant population dynamics, by disentangling the effects of related costs and benefits. We suggest analyzing the effects of interactions on population dynamics as opposed to merely analyzing the partners and their interaction strength.
Ajuts:	Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CSD2008-0040
Nota:	Altres ajuts: REN2001-2500
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Formigues granívores ; Llavors ; Granivorous ants ; Seeds
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 7, Issue 8 (August 2012) , p. e42869, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042869
PMID: 22880125

11 p, 367.2 KB

El registre apareix a les col·leccions:
Documents de recerca > Documents dels grups de recerca de la UAB > Centres i grups de recerca (producció científica) > Ciències > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Articles > Articles publicats