Frugivore biodiversity and complementarity in interaction networks enhance landscape-scale seed dispersal function

1. Animal biodiversity matters for the provision of ecosystem functions derived from trophic activity. However, the mechanisms underlying this pattern remain elusive since animal abundance and diversity, which are the components commonly used for representing biodiversity, provide poor information about ecological complementarity in species assemblages. An approach based on species interaction networks may overcome this constraint.
2. Here, we relate frugivore biodiversity and frugivore-plant network structure with landscape-scale seed dispersal function. We sampled, for two years, and at fourteen plots with variable assemblages of frugivores and plants in the Cantabrian Range (N Spain), data on the abundance and diversity of frugivorous birds, the consumption of fleshy fruits of woody plants, and the landscape-scale patterns of avian seed deposition. As a measure of interaction complementarity in seed dispersal networks, we estimated the degree to which frugivore and plant species spe...