Raíssa Alves Sepulvida
Project: Linking plant-soil feedback to the effect of frugivore treatment on seed germination
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Supervisor: Laurence Culot; Co-supervisor: Carlos Peres (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK)
Abstract: Seed dispersal by animals is an important process for the maintenance of biodiversity in tropical forests. Seed cleaning by frugivores reduces the pathogen infestation and, long-distance dispersal - according to the Janzen-Connell model - helps to escape the density-dependent mortality. This high mortality under parent trees is mainly due to the soil microbiota – a process called negative plant-soil feedback. It has been shown that plant species occurring at low densities have their spatial distribution limited due to a stronger negative plant-soil feedback than high density species. This study aims to investigate how plant species with different adult densities are affected by the manipulation of frugivores: seed cleaning and the dispersal away from parent tree. We expect that low-density species, likely to experience a strong negative plant-soil feedback, are more likely to present a stronger distance effect than abundant species. We will conduct a field experiment with plant species that occur in different densities in the Fazenda São Nicolau (Amazonian Forest), applying four treatments to seeds: seeds with fruit pulp, seeds without pulp (hand-cleaned), whole fruits with fungicide and lastly, cleaned seeds with fungicide. The treatments will be placed both near and away from conspecific trees to test the effect of removal from parent trees. We will estimate the effect of seed cleaning and removal from conspecific on the germination and recruitment success. Additionally, we will estimate the number of seeds dispersed and the deposition sites of our target plant species by two large-bodied frugivore primates, Ateles chamek and Lagothrix cana. The combination of these results with our field experiment will enable the estimation of the seed dispersal effectiveness of these two endangered species.
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Contact: : sepulvidaalves@gmail.com
