The effects of human‐altered habitat spatial pattern on frugivory and seed dispersal: a global meta‐analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Seed dispersal by frugivorous animals is important for plant mobility, regeneration and persistence. Human‐caused landscape change is thought to disrupt seed dispersal, but evidence is scarce. We performed a comprehensive meta‐analysis on the effects of habitat spatial pattern on frugivory and seed dispersal. We found 233 effects from 71 studies. At a patch or local scale, altered habitat spatial pattern was measured as declining patch size, increasing patch isolation or habitat edge (versus interior). At a landscape scale it was measured as declining amount of habitat, increasing mean patch isolation, increasing number of patches or increasing habitat edge in the landscape. We found overall negative effects of altered habitat spatial pattern on: 1) the quantity of frugivory or seed dispersal, 2) the number of species involved in a plant–frugivore interaction and 3) seed dispersal distance. Moderator variable analysis was only possible for the first of these. It revealed negative responses of the quantity of frugivory or seed dispersal to habitat loss at both the local scale (declining patch size), and the landscape scale (declining habitat amount), but little evidence for a response to habitat edge at either scale. In addition, altered habitat spatial pattern reduced the quantity of frugivory or seed dispersal more strongly in temperate than tropical areas. Finally, the few‐recorded effects of landscape‐scale fragmentation per se (increasing patch density or edge density) on the quantity of frugivory or seed dispersal were mixed and weak. Our meta‐analysis reinforces the notion that habitat loss is a major threat to frugivory and seed dispersal by animals, and reveals an insufficiency of studies of the effects of habitat fragmentation per se. Thus, based on the current literature, we conclude that maintaining and increasing habitat amount is vital for maintaining seed dispersal by frugivorous animals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.026 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".