Frugivore assemblage of Ficus superba in a warm‐temperate forest in Yakushima, Japan

Abstract

Understanding fig consumption patterns is important because figs are regarded as a keystone resource for many frugivorous species in the tropics. While much work on fig consumption has been conducted in tropical regions, temperate forests are particularly interesting for study owing to pronounced seasonal variations in temperature and community‐level fruiting phenology. We studied frugivore consumption of Ficus superba (Miq.) Miq. var. japonica Miq syconia in a warm‐temperate forest in Yakushima, southern Japan. We conducted 141 4‐h focal observations of fruiting F. superba trees over 12 months. We aimed to assess the relative quantitative contribution of each species of frugivore to F. superba consumption over a year as well as factors affecting seasonal variation in consumption. Japanese macaques were by far the most important F. superba syconia consumer (87.6 %), followed by brown‐eared bulbuls (5.0 %), and varied tits (4.2 %). Japanese macaques increased their F. superba consumption when the temperature was high and fruit availability (F. superba and other species) was low. Macaques seemed to avoid searching for rare F. superba trees during winter and used F. superba syconia as a fallback food during fruit scarcity. Birds showed the opposite pattern: they increased F. superba syconia consumption when the temperature was low and fruit availability was high. This was probably because birds eat insects as their main food in the summer and switch to fruit as autumn turns to winter.

Latitudinal effects on phenology near the northern limit of figs in China

“…The fig/fig-wasp mutualism is the center of a diverse web of interacting species, including NPFWs, other invertebrate inhabitants of developing syconia, such as nematodes, and vertebrate frugivores that consume the ripe figs. This study and the others mentioned above show that most monoecious fig species continue to support a diverse fauna of NPFWs near the poleward limits of their range, and a study on the island of Yakushima, Japan, found that the monoecious Ficus superba still attracted a diverse frugivore assemblage year-round at 30°N 43 . Dioecious figs support fewer NPFWs, are mostly smaller plants with smaller crops, and do not supply a year-round source of ripe figs in seasonal climates, but their densities in some areas can be high, so they may be a seasonally significant resource for frugivores 7 .…”

Geographical and seasonal variation of plant taxa detected in faces of Cervus nippon yakushimae based on plant DNA analysis in Yakushima Island

“…In fact, seasonal changes in RRA of the following predominant taxa (Figure 5) were associated with their leafing and fruiting phonologies. (1) In W, F. subpisocarpa was most frequently detected in April when leafing occurred, and a large number of green leaves produced in the previous year fell on the ground (observed by the authors), and the second most frequently detected in October when abundant fruits were produced (Otani & Kanetani, 2008), consumed by M. fuscata yakui (Hamada & Hanya, 2016), and often fell to the ground. (2) In W, Machilus was most frequently detected in June and August, which occurred during the 3.25 months when the fruits fell to the ground (Hanya & Aiba, 2011).…”

Bajando la escala en las redes de interacción planta-frugívoro para un ensamblaje de consumidores de ficus

“…An increase in feeding rates with consumer body size was also reported for avian consumers of the tree Schefflera morototoni in Panama (Martin, 1985). Several studies have reported data on feeding rates and total consumption at fig trees but did not analyze the relationship with consumer body size (Coates-Estrada & Estrada, 1986;Goodman et al, 1997;Hamada & Hanya, 2016), probably because the number of consumer species in these studies was low. However, we plotted data reported in Coates-Estrada and Estrada (1986), which includes 14 bird species and 4 mammals consuming Ficus aff.…”