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Dryad

Dispersers and environment drive global variation in fruit color syndromes

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Jun 09, 2021 version files 72.27 MB

Abstract

The colors of fleshy fruits play a critical role in plant dispersal by advertising ripe fruits to consumers. Fruit colors have long been classified into syndromes attributed to selection by animal dispersers, despite weak evidence for this hypothesis. Here, we test the relative importance of biotic (bird and mammal frugivory) and abiotic (wet season temperatures, growing season length, and UV-B radiation) factors in determining fruit color syndrome in 3,163 species of fleshy-fruited plants. We find that both dispersers and environment are important, and they interact. In warm areas, contrastive, bird-associated fruit colors increase with relative bird frugivore prevalence, whereas in cold places these colors dominate even where mammalian dispersers are prevalent. We present near-global maps of predicted fruit color syndrome based on our species-level model and our newly developed characterizations of relative importance of bird and mammal frugivores.