A continent-wide study reveals clear relationships between regional abiotic conditions and post-dispersal seed predation

Aim: Large-scale patterns linking energy availability, biological productivity and diversity form a central focus of ecology. Despite evidence that the activity and abundance of animals may be limited by climatic variables associated with regional biological productivity (e.g. mean annual precipitat...

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Published in:Journal of biogeography 2015-04, Vol.42 (4), p.662-670
Main Authors: Orrock, John L., Borer, Elizabeth T., Brudvig, Lars A., Firn, Jennifer, MacDougall, Andrew S., Melbourne, Brett A., Yang, Louie H., Baker, Dirk V., Bar-Massada, Avi, Crawley, Michael J., Damschen, Ellen I., Davies, Kendi F., Gruner, Daniel S., Kay, Adam D., Lind, Eric, McCulley, Rebecca L., Seabloom, Eric W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AET
Annual actual evapotranspiration
climate
Dispersal
granivory
Herbivores
North America
plant-consumer interactions
Pollination, parasitism, predation: interactions across trophic levels
precipitation
Predation
seed predation
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Summary:Aim: Large-scale patterns linking energy availability, biological productivity and diversity form a central focus of ecology. Despite evidence that the activity and abundance of animals may be limited by climatic variables associated with regional biological productivity (e.g. mean annual precipitation and annual actual evapotranspiration), it is unclear whether plant-granivore interactions are themselves influenced by these climatic factors across broad spatial extents.We evaluated whether climatic conditions that are known to alter the abundance and activity of granivorous animals also affect rates of seed removal. Location: Eleven sites across temperate North America. Methods: We used a common protocol to assess the removal of the same seed species (Avena sauva) over a 2-day period. Model selection via the Akaike information criterion was used to determine a set of candidate binomial generalized linear mixed models that evaluated the relationship between local climatic data and post-dispersal seed prédation. Results: Annual actual evapotranspiration was the single best predictor of the proportion of seeds removed. Annual actual evapotranspiration and mean annual precipitation were both positively related to mean seed removal and were included in four and three of the top five models, respectively. Annual temperature range was also positively related to seed removal and was an explanatory variable in three of the top four models. Main conclusions: Our work provides the first evidence that energy and precipitation, which are known to affect consumer abundance and activity, also translate to strong, predictable patterns of seed prédation across a continent. More generally, these findings suggest that future changes in temperature and precipitation could have widespread consequences for plant species composition in grasslands, through impacts on plant recruitment.
ISSN:0305-0270
1365-2699
DOI:10.1111/jbi.12451