Impacts of climate change and management responses in tropical forests depend on complex frugivore-mediated seed dispersal

Aim: Biodiversity outcomes under global change will be influenced by a range of ecological processes, and these processes are increasingly being considered in models of biodiversity change. However, the level of model complexity required to adequately account for important ecological processes often...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global ecology and biogeography 2015-06, Vol.24 (6), p.685-694
Main Authors: Mokany, Karel, Prasad, Soumya, Westcott, David A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Australia
beta-diversity
Biodiversity
Climate change
composition
Dispersal
diversity
fruit
metacommunity
plant
restoration
richness
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Summary:Aim: Biodiversity outcomes under global change will be influenced by a range of ecological processes, and these processes are increasingly being considered in models of biodiversity change. However, the level of model complexity required to adequately account for important ecological processes often remains unclear. Here we assess how considering realistically complex frugivore-mediated seed dispersal influences the projected climate change outcomes for plant diversity in the Australian Wet Tropics (all 4313 species). Location: The Australian Wet Tropics, Queensland, Australia. Methods: We applied a metacommunity model (M-SET) to project biodiversity outcomes using seed dispersal models that varied in complexity, combined with alternative climate change scenarios and habitat restoration scenarios. Results: We found that the complexity of the dispersal model had a larger effect on projected biodiversity outcomes than did dramatically different climate change scenarios. Applying a simple dispersal model that ignored spatial, temporal and taxonomie variation due to frugivore-mediated seed dispersal underestimated the reduction in the area of occurrence of plant species under climate change and overestimated the loss of diversity in fragmented tropical forest remnants. The complexity of the dispersal model also changed the habitat restoration approach identified as the best for promoting persistence of biodiversity under climate change. Main conclusions: The consideration of complex processes such as frugivoremediated seed dispersal can make an important difference in how we understand and respond to the influence of climate change on biodiversity.
ISSN:1466-822X
1466-8238
DOI:10.1111/geb.12292