The role of trait combination in the conspicuousness of fruit display among bird-dispersed plants

In visually-driven seed dispersal mutualisms, natural selection should promote plant strategies that maximize fruit visibility to dispersers. Plants might increase seed dispersal profitability by increasing conspicuousness of fruit display, understood as a plant strategy to maximize fruit detectability by seed dispersers.
The role of different plant traits in fruit choice and consumption by seed dispersers has been broadly studied. However, there is no clear evidence about the importance of the traits that increase conspicuousness of fruit display. Because strategies to maximize conspicuousness of fruit display are diverse, and usually are expected to be costly, we would expect that individual plant species will produce an efficient combination of traits.We explored this prediction with 62 fleshy-fruited plant species of a subtropical Andean forest (Southern Yungas), and using a large dataset of fruit consumption by birds (4,476 records). The conspicuousness of fruit display was charac...

在视觉介导的种子传播互利共生关系中，自然选择应推动植物演化出最大化果实对传播者可见性的策略。植物可通过提升果实展示的醒目性来提升种子传播效益，而果实展示醒目性指植物最大化果实被种子传播者侦测到的概率的策略。
不同植物性状在种子传播者选择和取食果实过程中的作用已得到广泛研究。然而，目前尚无明确证据表明提升果实展示醒目性的相关性状的重要性。鉴于提升果实展示醒目性的策略多种多样，且通常被认为具有较高成本，我们推测单个植物物种会形成高效的性状组合。
本研究以亚热带安第斯森林（南部永加斯）的62种肉质果实植物为研究对象，利用包含4476条记录的鸟类取食果实大型数据集对这一预测进行了验证。果实展示的醒目性特征被[原文内容未完整呈现]。