To infer frugivory interactions from plant and animal traits

Abstract

Frugivory is crucial process that shapes the diversity and functionality of tropical ecosystems. Especially the Atlantic forest is a complex tropical forest ecosystem with more than 20,000 species of plants, 261 species of mammals, 688 species of birds, 200 species of reptiles and 280 species of amphibian. In this ecosystem frugivory plays an important role due to that 89% of all woody species are dispersed by animals . However, know all possible plant-frugivore interactions in a megadiverse forest is a huge task that requires significant empirical efforts, and many studies of frugivory networks face the problem of having real unseen interactions. Therefore, our project seeks to develop an accurate statistical methodology that integrates complexity and uncertainty, to predict unseen frugivory interactions based on plants and animals traits for megadiverse communities such as the Atlantic Forest. (AU)