INVESTIGADORES
VERGARA TABARES David Lautaro
artículos
Título:
Fruiting phenology as a "triggering attribute" of invasion process: Do invasive species take advantage of seed dispersal service provided by native birds?
Autor/es:
VERGARA-TABARES, DAVID L.; BADINI, JULIETA; PELUC, SUSANA I.
Revista:
BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS
Editorial:
SPRINGER
Referencias:
Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2016 vol. 18 p. 677 - 687
ISSN:
1387-3547
Resumen:
Mechanisms underlying biological invasion of highly disturbed ecosystemsare well known, yet mechanisms responsible for biological invasion ofundisturbed or weakly disturbed ecosystems are less understood. Thetriggering attribute (TA) approach, proposed as a mechanism that explains plant invasion success in undisturbed or weakly disturbed systems, considers that the spread of alien species depends on specific vegetative or regenerative traits in invasive species, discontinuously distributed in comparison to the resident community. In mountain Chaco woodland, fruiting phenology of ornithocorous invasive plants has been proposed as a TA, because it would allow invasive species to benefit from seed dispersal service, which is unused by native plants during a specific period of the year (winter). Under the seed dispersal ecology framework, we evaluated iffruiting phenology (fructification largely uncoupled with native species) of the fleshyfruited invasive Pyracantha angustifolia affects bird fruit consumption, and allows the invasive to take advantage of the unused seed dispersal service during winter. If uncoupled fructification phenology represents a TA, seed disperser, seed predator, and pulp consumer diversity, abundance, and fruit consumption on P. angustifolia (which fructifies in winter), will be higher than on its exotic congeneric P. coccinea during summer, when fructification overlaps with native Celtis ehrenbergiana and many other native species. We found that: (1) disperser bird abundance and fruit consumption did not differ between P. angustifolia and P. coccinea; (2) the most diverse frugivorous assemblage was observed on C. ehrenbergiana, yet it had the lowest proportion of seed dispersers and the highest fruit consumption by seed predators and, (3) we also observed higher proportion of seed predators on P. angustifolia (uncoupled fructification scenario) than on P. coccinea (coupled fructification scenario). Our results suggest that invasive uncoupled fructification phenologiesy does not represent a true TA which facilitates plant invasion processes in an undisturbed or weakly disturbed ecosystem.