Huang Xiao, Dalsgaard Bo, Chen Si-Chong
State Key Laboratory of Plant Diversity and Specialty Crops, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Ecol Lett. 2025 Jan;28(1):e70061. doi: 10.1111/ele.70061.
Biotic interactions play an important role in species diversification and maintenance and, thus, are regarded as the architecture of biodiversity. Since Darwin and Wallace, biologists have debated whether biotic interactions are stronger towards the tropics and on continents, when compared to temperate regions and islands. Here, based on 354 avian frugivory networks accounting for 22,199 interactions between 1247 bird species and 2126 plant species, we quantified trait matching strength, which reflects interaction strength and specificity, across gradients of latitude and insularity globally. We found that matching between beak size and fruit size was significantly stronger towards the poles and on continents, when compared with the tropics and on islands. As underlining ecological factors, trait matching was stronger with a larger proportion of frugivory (measured as the mean proportion of fruits in bird diets) and network-level mean beak size, and with a smaller proportion of fleshy-fruited species (measured as the proportion of fleshy-fruited plant species in the botanical country where the network was located). These findings suggest that the latitudinal and insular patterns in trait matching are driven by biotic factors that may relate to trait co-evolution between interacting species and optimal foraging for bird species.
生物相互作用在物种多样化和维持过程中发挥着重要作用，因此被视为生物多样性的架构。自达尔文和华莱士时代以来，生物学家一直在争论，与温带地区和岛屿相比，生物相互作用在热带地区和大陆上是否更强。在此，基于354个鸟类食果网络，这些网络涵盖了1247种鸟类与2126种植物之间的22199次相互作用，我们在全球范围内的纬度和岛屿梯度上，量化了反映相互作用强度和特异性的性状匹配强度。我们发现，与热带地区和岛屿相比，喙大小与果实大小之间的匹配在极地地区和大陆上显著更强。作为突出的生态因素，当食果比例（以鸟类饮食中果实的平均比例衡量）和网络层面的平均喙大小更大，以及肉质果实物种比例（以网络所在植物区系中肉质果实植物物种的比例衡量）更小时，性状匹配更强。这些发现表明，性状匹配中的纬度和岛屿模式是由生物因素驱动的，这些因素可能与相互作用物种之间的性状共同进化以及鸟类物种的最佳觅食有关。
