Fruits signal optimization as a mediator of frugivory by animals

• Grant number: 23/10188-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Support Program for Fixating Young Doctors
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Agreement: CNPq
• Principal Investigator: Marina Corrêa Côrtes
• Grantee: Ana Cristina Vara Crestani
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/01518-5 - Fruits signal optimization as a mediator of frugivory by animals, AP.R

Abstract

Bats and birds consume a variety of fruit species and are responsible to keep thefrugivore and seed dispersal process in small fragments. The factors that increase the traitmatching of animal-plant interactions can be a fundamental tool for fragment regenerating sincebats and birds show a complementation of their ecological services. Fruit signals meet with themain sense used by animals to localize fruits at each hierarchical step of food acquisition. Theevolution of traits that act as a signal to fruit-eating animals is likely to be driven by animalforaging senses, such as olfaction and vision. Despite the related trait-matching between batsand fruits scent and birds and fruits color, there is a lack of studies of attraction of these groupsrelated to both signals. Furthermore, a huge number of chemical elements composed in fruit arerelated to scent and color that need to be more explored. If visual-oriented animals select fruitsbased on visual signals instead of olfactory ones, the goal of this proposal is to contrast thechemical compounds related to color with those related to scent and how much color and scentaffect the attractiveness of bats and birds. We expect that colorful fruits will invest less in scentcompounds and the emission of scent will be more attractive for bats than birds. Our resultswill contribute directly to phytochemical diversity knowledge and we will able to identify thetraits of the fruit that are shared or exclusively selected by bats or birds based on their sensorycapacities and how plants optimize consumption and seed removal. This proposal will directlycontribute to the "Dimensions US-BIOTA Sao Paulo: The contribution of frugivory and seeddispersal networks to forest regeneration: from phylogeny to genes" project by adding a newset of fruit traits, been possible to better understand which are the multiple layers that determinefrugivores animal attraction.