Fruit sizes and the structure of frugivorous communities in a New Guinea lowland rainforest

The insect‐focused classification of fruit syndromes in tropical rain forests: An inter‐continental comparison

“…For example, fruiting trees bearing fleshy fruits coupled with an endozoochory relationship reliant on high local bird density are more prominent in tropical forest regions with high precipitation (Almeida‐Neto, Campassi, Galetti, Jordano, & Oliveira‐Filho, ). The high abundance of fruit flies reared from fleshy fruits from Papua New Guinean (Ctvrtecka et al., ) and Thai forest contrasts with lower numbers from Panamanian forest, with fewer fleshy fruits (Basset et al.,), suggesting our insect seed syndrome results reflect the endozoochory dichotomy pattern of fleshy versus dry fruits present across rain forest regions (Chen et al., ). Further, birds and mammals that consume fleshy fruits have played a role in the evolutionary diversification of fruit morphology (Valido et al., ; Whitney, ).…”

“…For instance, Ctvrtecka et al. () defined fleshiness as percentage of fruit volume represented by mesocarp and used a conditional inference tree to identify critical values of fleshiness and seed size of predictive value for frugivory by weevils. Basset et al.…”

“…We used stems per species abundance (as measured by basal area) to quantify the ecological dominance of each fruit syndrome, as overall resource availability is likely to be an important factor for predicting insect occurrence (Basset et al., ; Ctvrtecka et al., ). Basset et al.…”

“…() for details. We have obtained data on seed and fruit‐feeding insects at all three sites through extensive rearing programs (Basset et al., ; Ctvrtecka et al., ) that became the basis for our fruit classification systems (Table ).…”

“…Fruit‐feeding insects may influence plant demography because they can kill individual trees while they are still at the embryo stage (Ehrlen, ). For example, seed predators in the beetle families Bruchinae and Scolytinae are responsible for high mortality of dry seeds of some rain forest trees (Janzen, ; Peguero & Espelta, ), while predation rates on seeds in fleshy fruits appears to be much lower (Basset et al., ; Ctvrtecka, Sam, Miller, Weiblen, & Novotny, ; Sam et al., ). Tropical forest trees rely mostly on frugivorous birds and mammals for seed dispersal (Florchinger, Braun, Bohning‐Gaese, & Schaefer, ; Gautier‐Hion et al., ; Janson, ).…”