Climate Change and Consequences for Plant-Frugivores Network in Tropical Andean Forest

6 Feb 2012 National Park Santuario de Flora y Fauna Otun Quimbaya, Colombia, Central and Latin America Forests

Marcia Carolina Muñoz

My research goal is to understand how environmental conditions affect the seed dispersal process (seedling recruitment) by birds in highly biodiverse forests and recognize the most important species (plants and frugivorous birds) to maintain forest regeneration in Andean Mountains.

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Climate change may trigger asynchrony among interacting populations thereby causing cascading effects of species co-extinctions throughout an ecosystem. Particularly, ecosystem processes such as seed dispersal and seedling recruitment could be modified under climate change. So far, we do not know how ecological interactions may be affected and what the co-dependence level is among species, particularly into highly diverse communities. Therefore, the knowledge of the mutualistic network between frugivorous birds and plants will allow focus strategies of conservation on the most vulnerable species to environmental changes, including birds or fleshy-fruited trees.

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This study aims to:

1) examine whether spatial climatic variation affects the strength of interactions of tropical plant-frugivore networks and seedling recruitment in Andean forest,

2) determine key species that maintain the seedling recruitment of the mountain forest (dispersers) or provide food for a core group of animals (trees).

The study will be conducted along an elevational gradient between 1800 m and 2800 m in the Ucumarí Regional Park and the National Park Santuario de Fauna y Flora Otún Quimbaya (Colombia). I will establish ten plots (100 x 20 m) distributed along an altitudinal gradient, every 100 m along this gradient. I will install data-loggers at each plot to record temperature and humidity. Inside these plots, I will also record the frugivorous bird visits and fruit consumption on all fleshy-fruited trees. I will do four one-month observation periods distributed over an entire year covering wet and dry season. I will carry out seedling surveys (<50 cm) every three months in each elevation and plot. I will use subplots within each plot to determine species richness of seedlings.

At the end, I will estimate one metrics at the species level for plants and frugivorous birds, the species strength with the R package "bipartite”. This metrics measure the importance of each frugivore for a set of plants in terms of its potential ability to disperse their seeds, or a plant species for a set of frugivorous birds in terms of food. Finally, I will test whether seedling communities are different along the gradient and this relationship with the metric species strength. At the end, my study will give new conservation targets in an effort to preserve seed dispersal and forest regeneration in cloud forests of the Colombian Andes.

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