Spatially-explicit avian frugivory, fruit availability, and seed rain in a latitudinal gradient of the Americas

Network metrics are widely used to infer the roles of mutualistic animals in plant communities and to predict the effect of species' loss. However, their empirical validation is scarce. Here we parameterized a joint species model of frugivory and seed dispersal with bird movement and foraging data from tropical and temperate communities. With this model we investigate the effect of frugivore loss on seed rain, and compare our predictions to those of standard coextinction models and network metrics. Topological coextinction models underestimated species loss after the removal of highly-linked frugivores with unique foraging behaviors. Network metrics informed about changes in seed rain quantity after frugivore loss. However, changes in seed rain composition were only predicted by partner diversity. Nestedness, closeness, and d’ specialization could not anticipate the effects of rearrangements in plant-frugivore communities following species loss. Accounting for behavioral differences amo...