1 research outputs found
Fungal infestation boosts fruit aroma and fruit removal by mammals and birds
For four decades, an influential hypothesis has posited that competition for food resources between
microbes and vertebrates selects for microbes to alter these resources in ways that make them
unpalatable to vertebrates. We chose an understudied cross kingdom interaction to experimentally
evaluate the effect of fruit infection by fungi on both vertebrate (mammals and birds) fruit preferences
and on ecologically relevant fruit traits (volatile compounds, toughness, etc). Our well-replicated field
experiments revealed that, in contrast to previous studies, frugivorous mammals and birds consistently
preferred infested over intact fruits. This was concordant with the higher level of attractive volatiles
(esters, ethanol) in infested fruits. This investigation suggests that vertebrate frugivores, fleshyfruited
plants, and microbes form a tripartite interaction in which each part could interact positively
with the other two (e.g. both orange seeds and fungal spores are likely dispersed by mammals). Such
a mutualistic view of these complex interactions is opposed to the generalized idea of competition
between frugivorous vertebrates and microorganisms. Thus, this research provides a new perspective
on the widely accepted plant evolutionary dilemma to make fruits attractive to mutualistic frugivores
while unattractive to presumed antagonistic microbes that constrain seed dispersalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio