Autor(es)

Villar, Nacho ^{[1, 2]} ; Paz, Claudia ^[1] ; Zipparro, Valesca ^[1] ; Nazareth, Sergio ^[1] ; Bulascoschi, Leticia ^[1] ; Bakker, Elisabeth S. ^[2] ; Galetti, Mauro ^{[3, 1]}

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Estadual Paulista, UNESP, Inst Biociencias, Dept Ecol, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[2] Netherlands Inst Ecol, Dept Aquat Ecol, Wageningen - Netherlands

^[3] Univ Miami, Dept Biol, Coral Gables, FL 33124 - USA

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY; v. 35, n. 2, p. 357-368, FEB 2021.
• Citações Web of Science: 7

Resumo

Tropical rainforests are populated by large frugivores that feed upon fruit-producing woody species, yet their role in regulating the cycle of globally important biogeochemical elements such as nitrogen is still unknown. This is particularly relevant because tropical forests play a prominent role in the nitrogen cycle and are becoming rapidly defaunated. Furthermore, frugivory is not considered in current plant-large herbivore-nutrient cycling frameworks exclusively focused on grazers and browsers. Here we used a long-term replicated paired control-exclusion experiment in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, where peccaries and tapirs are the largest native frugivores, to examine the impact of large ground-dwelling frugivores on modulating soil nitrogen cycling, considering their effects across a gradient of abundance of a hyper-dominant palm. We found that both large frugivores and dominant palms play a substantial role in modulating ammonium availability and nitrification rates. Large frugivores increased ammonium by 95%, which also increased additively with palm abundance. Nitrification rates increased with palm abundance in the presence of large frugivores, but not on exclosure plots. Large frugivores also stimulated the regulation of the functions of soil-nitrifying microorganisms, and modulated the landscape-scale variance in nitrogen availability. Such joint effects of large frugivores and palms are consistent with the notion of `fruiting lawns'. Our study indicates that frugivory plays a pivotal role in zoogeochemistry in tropical forests by regulating and structuring the nitrogen cycle, urging to accommodate frugivory in plant-large herbivore-nutrient cycling frameworks. It also indicates that defaunation, deforestation and illegal palm and timber harvesting seriously affect nitrogen cycling in tropical forests, that play a prominent role in the global cycle of this nutrient. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 14/01986-0 - Consequências ecológicas da defaunação na Mata Atlântica
• Beneficiário: Mauro Galetti Rodrigues
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático
• Processo FAPESP: 16/25197-0 - Efeitos da defaunação sobre interações solo-planta em florestas tropicais
• Beneficiário: Claudia Pandolfo Paz
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 18/20599-8 - Regulação da dinâmica de comunidades e ecossistemas por grandes herbívoros de florestas tropicais
• Beneficiário: Jose Ignacio Fernandez de La Pradilla Villar
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Estágio de Pesquisa - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 15/11521-7 - Movimento na defaunação: o papel do comportamento animal e as interações espaciais na mediação de cascatas tróficas, a divisao do nicho e a dinâmica de comunidades na Mata Atlântica.
• Beneficiário: Jose Ignacio Fernandez de La Pradilla Villar
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 13/50424-1 - Scaling biodiversity in tropical and boreal streams:implications for diversity mapping and environmental assessment (scalebio). (fapesp-aka)
• Beneficiário: Tadeu de Siqueira Barros
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Regular
• Processo FAPESP: 18/00212-1 - Fertilização do solo e dispersão de fungos micorrízicos por mamíferos na Mata Atlântica
• Beneficiário: Leticia Bulascoschi Cagnoni
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Iniciação Científica