Fruits and frugivores of the Brazilian Cerrado: ecological and phylogenetic considerations

Abstract

Knowing the morphological and phylogenetic patterns of fruits of a plant community may elucidate plant-frugivore interactions, and analysis of dispersal syndromes is a practical approach to understanding these mutualisms. We investigated different zoochorous fruits and frugivorous animals among Cerrado formations (forest, savanna and grassland), mapped dispersal syndromes on a Cerrado angiosperm phylogeny and tested for phylogenetic signal. For a core region in Cerrado, we found that, among almost a thousand fruit species and 258 fruit-eating vertebrates, 60% of the fruits had an ornithochorous syndrome and that 70% of the frugivores were birds. Most fruit and frugivorous species (~80%) inhabit forest formations, but many of them also occurred in more than one Cerrado formation. The zoochorous syndromes were found to have little phylogenetic signal, with many plant families exhibiting more than one fruit syndrome, and with ornithochory being widely distributed throughout the phylogeny. Our results suggest that plant-frugivore interactions tend to be evolutionarily labile in this Neotropical region, although birds have had a prominent role in fruit evolution. Furthermore, we found that all three Cerrado formations seem to be interrelated in maintaining functional stability of the plant-frugivore mutualisms in the Cerrado biome.