Generalist species are the linchpins of networks, as they are important for maintaining network structure and function. Previous studies have shown that interactions between generalists tend to occur consistently across years and sites. However, the link between temporal and spatial interaction persistence across scales remains unclear. To address this gap, we collected data on plant-pollinator interactions throughout the flowering period for five years across six plots in a subalpine meadow in the Rocky Mountains. We...

Forest biomass plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Therefore, understanding the factors that control forest biomass stocks and dynamics is a key challenge in the context of global change. We analyzed data from 60 forest plots in the subtropical Andes (22-27.5° S and 300-2300 m asl) to describe patterns and identify drivers of aboveground biomass (AGB) stocks and dynamics. We found that AGB stocks remained roughly constant with elevation due to compensating...

Species interactions can propagate disturbances across space via direct and indirect effects, potentially connecting species at a global scale. However, ecological and biogeographic boundaries may mitigate this spread by demarcating the limits of ecological networks. We tested whether large-scale ecological boundaries (ecoregions and biomes) and human disturbance gradients increase dissimilarity among plant-frugivore networks, while accounting for background spatial and elevational gradients and differences in network sampling. We assessed network dissimilarity patterns over a broad spatial...

1. According to diet-regulation hypotheses, animals select food to regulate the intake of macronutrients or maximise energy feeding efficiency. Specifically, the nutrient balance model proposes that foraging is primarily a process of balancing multiple nutrients to achieve a nutritional intake target, while the energy maximisation model proposes that foraging aims to maximise energy. 2. Here, we evaluate the adjustment of fruit diets (the fruit-derived component of the diets) to nutritional and energy intake targets, characterizing...

Studying species interactions in nature often requires elaborate logistics and intense fieldwork. The difficulties in such task might hinder our ability to answer questions on how biotic interactions change with the environment. Fortunately, a workaround to this problem lies within scientific collections. For some animals, the inspection of preserved specimens can reveal the scars of past antagonistic encounters, such as predation attempts. A common defensive behaviour that leaves scars on animals is autotomy, the loss...

The “hierarchy of factors” hypothesis states that decomposition rates are controlled primarily by climatic, followed by biological and soil variables. Tropical montane forests (TMF) are globally important ecosystems, yet there have been limited efforts to provide a biome-scale characterization of litter decomposition. We designed a common litter decomposition experiment replicated in 23 tropical montane sites across the Americas, Asia, and Africa and combined these results with a previous study of 23 sites in tropical lowland...

The data contained in the three ZIP files represents the following information on smallholder homestead distribution and dynamics across the Gran Chaco ecoregion: - presence of smallholder homesteads for target years in five-year intervals between 1985 and 2015 [% per grid cell] - net loss of smallholder homesteads between five-year intervals between 1985 and 2015 [% per grid cell] - net gain of smallholder homesteads between five-year intervals between 1985 and 2015 [% per grid...

1. Fire represents a frequent disturbance in many ecosystems, which can affect plant-pollinator assemblages and hence the services they provide. Furthermore, fire events could affect the architecture of plant-pollinator interaction networks, modifying the structure and function of communities. 2. Some pollinators, such as wood-nesting bees, may be particularly affected by fire events due to damage to nesting material and its long regeneration time. However, it remains unclear whether fire influences the structure of bee plant...

• Dispersal is a key ecological process that influences plant community assembly. Therefore, understanding whether dispersal strategies are associated with climate is of utmost importance, particularly in areas greatly exposed to climate change. We examined alpine plant communities located in the mountain summits of the tropical Andes across a 4000 km latitudinal gradient. We investigated species dispersal strategies and tested their association with climatic conditions and their evolutionary history. • We used dispersal-related traits (dispersal...

Data package for 'Untangling the importance of niche breadth and niche position as drivers of tree species abundance and occupancy across biogeographic regions '. Global Ecology and Biogeography 2020. ABSTRACT Despite decades of interest in how ecological niches shape species commonness and rarity at local and regional scales, the relative importance of different niche mechanisms within and across ecosystems remains unresolved. We tested the relative importance of niche breadth (range of environmental conditions where species...

The high tropical Andes host one of the richest alpine floras of the world, with exceptionally high levels of endemism and turnover rates. Yet, little is known about the patterns and processes that structure altitudinal and latitudinal variation in plant community diversity. Herein we present the first continental-scale comparative study of plant community diversity on summits of the tropical Andes. Data were obtained from 792 permanent vegetation plots (1m2) within 50 summits, distributed along a...

1. Habitat loss is the primary cause of local extinctions. Yet, there is considerable uncertainty regarding how fast species respond to habitat loss, and how time-delayed responses vary in space. 2. We focused on the Argentine Dry Chaco (ca. 32 million ha), a global deforestation hotspot, and tested for time-delayed response of bird and mammal communities to landscape transformation. We quantified the magnitude of extinction debt by modelling contemporary species richness as a function of...

We explored the evolution of morphological integration in the most noteworthy example of adaptive radiation in mammals, the New World leaf-nosed bats, using a massive dataset and by combining phylogenetic comparative methods and quantitative genetic approaches. We demonstrated that the phenotypic covariance structure remained conserved on a broader phylogenetic scale but also showed a substantial divergence between inter-clade comparisons. Most of the phylogenetic structure in the integration space can be explained by splits at the...

In visually-driven seed dispersal mutualisms, natural selection should promote plant strategies that maximize fruit visibility to dispersers. Plants might increase seed dispersal profitability by increasing conspicuousness of fruit display, understood as a plant strategy to maximize fruit detectability by seed dispersers. The role of different plant traits in fruit choice and consumption by seed dispersers has been broadly studied. However, there is no clear evidence about the importance of the traits that increase conspicuousness of...

The R dataset consists of the bipartite plant-pollinator interaction matrices (bipartite.networks) for 18 subseas (3 subseasons per 6 years), 18 subseasonal dependence matrices (directed.networks), and the plant species (plant.id) and pollinator species (pollinator.id) identification codes. The code used for the analyses (miele-JAE.R) is also provided.

Aim: Ecological niches shape species commonness and rarity, yet the relative importance of different niche mechanisms within and across ecosystems remains unresolved. We tested the influence of niche breadth (range of environmental conditions where species occur) and niche position (marginality of a species’ environmental distribution relative to the mean environmental conditions of a region) on tree-species abundance and occupancy across three biogeographic regions. Location: Argentinian Andes; Bolivian Amazon; Missouri Ozarks. Time period: 2002–2010. Major taxa...

The study of mutualistic interaction networks has led to valuable insights into ecological and evolutionary processes. However, our understanding of network structure may depend upon the temporal scale at which we sample and analyze network data. To date, we lack a comprehensive assessment of the temporal scale-dependence of network structure across a wide range of temporal scales and geographic locations. If network structure is temporally scale-dependent, networks constructed over different temporal scales may provide very...

This dataset (Andean_AGB.xlsx) has the data employed in the paper entitled Old-growth Andean forests as globally important carbon sinks and future carbon refuges. The data was compiled as the results of the work of several research teams spread out across the Andean region. The information available here has data about aboveground carbon stocks and dynamics and the main explanatory variables, such as climate and symbiotic root associations.

Aim: How species respond to climate change is influenced by their sensitivity to climatic conditions (i.e., their climatic niche) and aspects of their adaptive capacity (e.g., their dispersal ability, ecological niche). To date, it is largely unknown whether and how species’ sensitivity to climate change and their adaptive capacity covary. However, understanding this relationship is important to predict the potential consequences of a changing climate for species assemblages. Here, we test how species’ sensitivity to...

Abstract Aim: Climate change causes species’ range shifts globally. Terrestrial plant species often lag behind temperature shifts, and it is unclear to what extent animal-dispersed plants can track climate change. Here, we estimate the ability of bird-dispersed plant species to track future temperature change on a tropical mountain. Location: Tropical elevational gradient (500–3500 m a.s.l.) in the Manú biosphere reserve, Peru Time period: 1960–1990 to 2061–2080 Taxa: Fleshy-fruited plants, avian frugivores Methods: Using simulations based...