The cryptic regulation of diversity by functionally complementary large tropical forest herbivores

1. Tropical forests hold some of the world’s most diverse communities of plants. Many populations of large-bodied herbivores are threatened in these systems, yet their ecological functions and contribution towards the maintenance of high levels of plant diversity are poorly known. The impact of these herbivores on plant communities through antagonistic seed and seedling predation has received much attention, whilst their relevance as seed dispersal agents has been largely overlooked in experimental studies.
2. Here we tested how two key and functionally distinct large generalist mammalian herbivore species (the tapir Tapirus terrestris- a solitary browser and generalist seed disperser, and the white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari- a group-living generalist seed/seedling predator) affect spatiotemporal patterns of diversity of seedling communities in tropical forests. We conducted a long-term multi-region landscape-scale exclusion experiment across four regions of the Atlantic forest of ...