Who dispersed the seeds? The use of DNA barcoding in frugivory and seed dispersal studies

By J. P. González-Varo, J. Arroyo, Pedro Jordano. 2014

106 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Assessing dispersal events in plants faces important challenges and limitations. A methodological issue that limits advances in our understanding of seed dissemination by frugivorous animals is identifying ‘which species dispersed the seeds’. This is essential for assessing how multiple frugivore species contribute distinctly to critical dispersal events such as seed delivery to safe sites, long‐distance dispersal and the colonization of non‐occupied habitats. Here, we describe DNA‐barcoding protocols successfully applied to bird‐dispersed seeds sampled in the field. Avian DNA was extracted from the surface of defecated or regurgitated seeds, allowing the identification of the frugivore species that contributed each dispersal event. Disperser species identification was based on a 464‐bp mitochondrial DNA region (COI: cytochrome c oxidase subunit I). We illustrate the possible applications of this method with bird‐dispersed seeds sampled in the field. DNA‐barcoding provides a non‐invasive technique that allows quantifying frugivory and seed dispersal interaction networks, assessing the contribution of each frugivore species to seed rain in different microhabitats, and testing whether different frugivore species select different fruit/seed sizes. DNA barcoding of animal‐dispersed seeds can resolve the distribution of dispersal services provided by diverse frugivore assemblages, allowing a robust and precise estimation of the different components of seed dispersal effectiveness, previously unattainable to traditional field studies at individual seed level. Given that seeds are sampled at the end of the dispersal process, this technique enables us to link the identity of the disperser species responsible for each dispersal event to plant traits and environmental features, thereby building a bridge between frugivory and seed deposition patterns.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/db5ca1d1666b8529c8c16c462fec8fd3dfdcb904

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Citations in the corpus

Plant DNA barcodes: Applications today and in the future (2017, background): “These same types of DNA barcoding protocols have also been adapted to tracking and identifying the vectors of bird-dispersed fruits and seeds in the field (Gonzalez-Varo et al., 2014) in order to build a quantifiable network of frugivores and seed dispersal interactions.”
Seven Shortfalls that Beset Large-Scale Knowledge of Biodiversity (2015, background): “Plantfrugivore interactions have been scored from vertebrate regurgitates or gut/fecal contents (Poulin et al. 1999), but identification of propagules is based on morphological recognition, sowing, or, increasingly, molecular studies (Marrero et al. 2009, González-Varo et al. 2014).”