Individual-based networks reveal the highly skewed interactions of a frugivore mutualist with individual plants in a diverse community

While plant-animal interactions occur fundamentally at the individual level, the bulk of research examining the mechanisms that drive interaction patterns has focused on the species or population level. In seed-dispersal mutualisms between frugivores and plants, little is known about the role of space and individual-level variation among plants in structuring patterns of frugivore foraging and, thus, seed dispersal in a plant community. Here we use an animal perspective to examine how space and variation between individual plants affect movement and visitation by frugivores foraging on individual fruiting plants. To do this, we used a spatially explicit network approach informed by observations of the movement and foraging of a frugivorous lemur species (Eulemur rubriventer) amongst individual plants in a diverse plant community in Madagascar. The resulting hierarchical networks, in which a few individual plants received the bulk of the interactions, demonstrated how a generalist frugiv...