Nature Communications, 13
Nov 14, 2022
Global and regional ecological boundaries explain abrupt spatial discontinuities in avian frugivory interactions
Lucas P. Martins, Daniel B. Stouffer, Pedro G. Blendinger, Katrin Böhning-Gaese, Galo Buitrón-Jurado, Marta Correia, José Miguel Costa, D. Matthias Dehling, Camila I. Donatti, Carine Emer, Mauro Galetti, Ruben Heleno, Pedro Jordano, Ícaro Menezes, José Carlos Morante-Filho, Marcia C. Muñoz, Eike Lena Neuschulz, Marco Aurélio Pizo, Marta Quitián, Roman A. Ruggera, Francisco Saavedra, Vinicio Santillán, Virginia Sanz D’Angelo, Matthias Schleuning, Luís Pascoal da Silva, Fernanda Ribeiro da Silva, Sérgio Timóteo, Anna Traveset, Maximilian G. R. Vollstädt, Jason M. Tylianakis
Species interactions can propagate disturbances across space via direct and indirect effects, potentially connecting species at a global scale. However, ecological and biogeographic boundaries may mitigate this spread by demarcating the limits of ecological networks. We tested whether large-scale ecological boundaries (ecoregions and biomes) and human disturbance gradients increase dissimilarity among plant-frugivore networks, while accounting for background spatial and elevational gradients and differences in network sampling. We assessed network dissimilarity patterns over a broad spatial scale, using 196 quantitative avian frugivory networks (encompassing 1496 plant and 1004 bird species) distributed across 67 ecoregions, 11 biomes, and 6 continents. We show that dissimilarities in species and interaction composition, but not network structure, are greater across ecoregion and biome boundaries and along different levels of human disturbance. Our findings indicate that biogeographic boundaries delineate the world’s biodiversity of interactions and likely contribute to mitigating the propagation of disturbances at large spatial scales.