Pollination and seed dispersal are the most threatened processes of plant regeneration
- Plant regeneration is essential for maintaining forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, which are globally threatened by human disturbance. Here we present the first integrative meta-analysis on how forest disturbance affects multiple ecological processes of plant regeneration including pollination, seed dispersal, seed predation, recruitment and herbivory. We analysed 408 pairwise comparisons of these processes between near-natural and disturbed forests. Human impacts overall reduced plant regeneration. Importantly, only processes early in the regeneration cycle that often depend on plant-animal interactions, i.e. pollination and seed dispersal, were negatively affected. Later processes, i.e. seed predation, recruitment and herbivory, showed overall no significant response to human disturbance. Conserving pollination and seed dispersal, including the animals that provide these services to plants, should become a priority in forest conservation efforts globally.
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| Author: | Eike Lena NeuschulzORCiDGND, Thomas MuellerORCiDGND, Matthias SchleuningORCiDGND, Katrin Böhning-GaeseORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-465782 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/srep29839 |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Pubmed Id: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27435026 |
| Parent Title (English): | Scientific reports |
| Publisher: | Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature |
| Place of publication: | [London] |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of Completion: | 2016 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2016/07/20 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2018/06/07 |
| Tag: | Conservation biology; Forest ecology |
| Volume: | 6 |
| Issue: | Art. 29839 |
| Page Number: | 6 |
| First Page: | 1 |
| Last Page: | 6 |
| Note: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 433822945 |
| Institutes: | Angeschlossene und kooperierende Institutionen / Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft |
| Biowissenschaften / Institut für Ökologie, Evolution und Diversität | |
| Fachübergreifende Einrichtungen / Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F) | |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 57 Biowissenschaften; Biologie / 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |
