Cover | Frugivory and Seed Dispersal Issue
September Cover
Photo by Ciro Albano
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This month’s cover encapsulates the whole issue, titled: Frugivory and seed dispersal: unifying ecology, evolution and conservation in a human‐modified world.
A crejoá (Cotinga maculata, Cotingidae), an endemic and endangered frugivorous bird of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, feeding on the fruits of açaí (Euterpe oleracea, Arecaceae) in an açaí plantation in Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil. An example of novel plant–frugivore interactions emerging in the Anthropocene.
Excerpt from the Editorial:
After more than four decades of research, plant-frugivore interactions have become one of the best-studied mutualisms in ecology. Each seed dispersal event results from interactions between individual plants and frugivores.
Yet its consequences extend far beyond the interaction itself, scaling up from individual fitness to population dynamics, community assembly, ecosystem functioning, and evolutionary change across spatial and temporal scales. Accordingly, we now have a much richer understanding of the fitness consequences of plant–frugivore interactions for individuals.
These interactions affect the survival and reproduction of plants and animals, triggering processes that shape ecological and evolutionary patterns across levels of organization. By transporting seeds away from parent plants, frugivores and other seed disperses shape plant demography, reproductive traits, spatial distributions, population persistence, gene flow and, ultimately, the diversity and evolution of plant communities. Conversely, fruiting plants shape the diets, movements, spatial distributions, and evolutionary trajectories of frugivorous animals.
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