Drivers and consequences of animal foraging behavior on seed dispersal and plant community composition

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dc.contributor.advisorDunham, Amy E.
dc.creatorTonos Luciano, Jadelys M.
dc.date.accessioned2021-10-11T20:51:42Z
dc.date.available2021-10-11T20:51:42Z
dc.date.created2021-12
dc.date.issued2021-10-11
dc.date.submittedDecember 2021
dc.date.updated2021-10-11T20:51:43Z
dc.description.abstractDispersal is essential to coexistence and community assembly. Animal dispersal is particularly important in hyper-diverse tropical communities. However, dispersal is generally represented simplistically, ignoring its behavioral basis and the resulting variation among species and individuals. Though the importance of behavior is increasingly recognized, further work is needed to link the details of disperser behavior to their repercussions for plant communities. Here we examine the influence of disperser behavior on spatial patterns of plant-animal interactions, seed deposition and plant community diversity. Chapter 1 showed how frugivore consideration of the intrinsic and extrinsic traits of the available fruiting resources can result in drastic inequalities in plant-animal interactions. A few highly visited plants in central locations, with rich neighborhoods and large fruit crops, increased visitation to near neighbors and contributed to a spatially modular interaction structure. This chapter suggests the need to examine individual-level interactions in plant-animal mutualisms, as frugivore foraging behavior may structure interactions in a way that cannot be predicted from the species-level. Chapter 2 examined how skewed foraging patterns may structure patterns in seed dispersal and considered the need to incorporate such foraging decisions into models of seed movement. We show that incorporating frugivore foraging decisions, in respect to highly preferred plants, influenced dispersal patterns in ways that cannot be accurately modeled with traditional dispersal models. This chapter suggests the need to incorporate individual-level variation in plant frugivore interactions, and the resulting directionality of movement, into future models of seed dispersal. Chapter 3 studied how frugivorous disperser foraging behavior may shape the spatial structure of plant community diversity. We found that biotic dispersal can be associated with higher or lower diversity near biotically dispersed plants, while abiotically dispersed plants showed little deviation. Additionally, different dispersal modes can vary in their influence on spatial diversity patterns, though the strength of such effects varied across sites relying on different disperser communities. This chapter indicates how even broadly categorizing disperser behavior can illuminate the mechanisms generating plant community structure.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationTonos Luciano, Jadelys M.. "Drivers and consequences of animal foraging behavior on seed dispersal and plant community composition." (2021) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111541">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111541</a>.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/111541
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.
dc.subjectseed dispersal
dc.subjectplant-animal interactions
dc.subjectintraspecific variation
dc.subjectnetworks
dc.subjectprimate
dc.titleDrivers and consequences of animal foraging behavior on seed dispersal and plant community composition
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.materialText
thesis.degree.departmentEcology and Evolutionary Biology
thesis.degree.disciplineNatural Sciences
thesis.degree.grantorRice University
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy
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