Data from: Estimated missing interactions change the structure and alter species roles in one of the world’s largest seed-dispersal networks
Data files
Jul 24, 2024 version files 1.01 MB
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atlantics_info.txt
942.01 KB
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atlantics_matrix.txt
35.59 KB
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birds_phylo.txt
3.60 KB
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input_matrix.txt
7.11 KB
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Latent_traits.R
6.88 KB
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plants_phylo.txt
6.23 KB
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README.md
1.69 KB
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Trait_matching.R
3.68 KB
Abstract
Ecological interactions between species can affect the performance of individuals, influence ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations, and ultimately shape community structure. Therefore, documenting and studying interactions is necessary for a better comprehension of ecological patterns. Yet, sampling interactions in the field is challenging. Even with extensive sampling efforts we can hardly obtain a comprehensive picture of which species interact with each other. Such missing interactions can produce important gaps that affect how we perceive and interpret the network formed by species interactions and the roles of individual species within those networks. In this study we propose two methods that combine data on species interactions with information on species traits and phylogenies to estimate potentially missing interactions. We use one of the largest datasets on plant-frugivore interactions, depicting thousands of interactions between birds and plants in the Atlantic Forest hotspot, to test those methods. Then, we analyze how adding newly estimated interactions change the network’s overall structure and the topological importance of each species within the seed dispersal network. We show that estimated missing interactions more than tripled the number of interactions in the network and impact the general topological properties of the network increasing nestedness and reducing modularity. Both methods generated networks with a similar structure and were effective in estimating new interactions, accurately predicting known interactions without overestimating interactions in place of true absences. More importantly, added interactions changed our perception on the topological role of species, with several undersampled species earning novel interactions and becoming more central to network structure. This shows that estimating interactions can be helpful to get a more complete idea of how a network may look like, besides helping to inform which interactions should be the focus of further sampling efforts.
Description of the data and file structure
There are two kinds of files here:
1) Two R scripts, one for each method, that detail the working of each the method and allow its reproduction.
2) 5 Data files needed to run the above scripts. The show 3 types of data:
a) The bird_phylo and plant_phylo are phylogenetic trees for the birds and plant species, respectively.
b)The atlantics_info file is a table with all frugivory interactions recorded through the literature. The “int_s” column show how many studies recorded that particular interaction, while the “n.studies” column show how many studies recorded the two species, interacting or not. The “freq” column is the division of the “int_s” column by the “n.studies”. “bird.gape” and “seed.size” column show the mean bird gape size and mean seed length (both in millimeters) for those species.
c) The input_matrix and atlantics_matrix are both interaction matrices. The atlantics_matrix is a matrix with the “freq” values (described above). This file is not needed to run any of the scripts, but it may be useful for comparison of the results of those methods. The input_matrix is a sub-set of the atlantics matrix with just the selected species used as baseline values for both models. Both matrices have the plants species on their rows and the bird species on their columns.
Code/Software
The files containing the two methods are R scripts. Both scripts are commented to facilitate their use. For version of the packages used, please check the article methods session.