Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Conservation Biology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, 04469, USA.
U.S. Geological Survey, Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, 04469, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2019 Sep;22(9):1387-1395. doi: 10.1111/ele.13324. Epub 2019 Jun 17.
Many plants rely on animals for seed dispersal, but are all individuals equally effective at dispersing seeds? If not, then the loss of certain individual dispersers from populations could have cascade effects on ecosystems. Despite the importance of seed dispersal for forest ecosystems, variation among individual dispersers and whether land-use change interferes with this process remains untested. Through a large-scale field experiment conducted on small mammal seed dispersers, we show that an individual's personality affects its choice of seeds, as well as how distant and where seeds are cached. We also show that anthropogenic habitat modifications shift the distribution of personalities within a population, by increasing the proportion of bold, active, and anxious individuals and in-turn affecting the potential survival and dispersal of seeds. We demonstrate that preserving diverse personality types within a population is critical for maintaining the key ecosystem function of seed dispersal.
许多植物依赖动物来传播种子，但所有个体在传播种子方面的效率都一样吗？如果不是，那么某些个体传播者从种群中的损失可能会对生态系统产生级联效应。尽管种子传播对森林生态系统很重要，但个体传播者之间的差异以及土地利用变化是否会干扰这一过程仍未得到检验。通过在小型哺乳动物种子传播者身上进行的大规模野外实验，我们表明个体的个性会影响它对种子的选择，以及种子被储存的远近和位置。我们还表明，人为的栖息地改变会通过增加大胆、活跃和焦虑个体的比例来改变种群内个性的分布，从而影响种子的潜在生存和传播。我们证明，在种群中保留多样化的个性类型对于维持种子传播这一关键生态系统功能至关重要。
