Macroevolution of the plant-hummingbird pollination system.

Plant-hummingbird interactions are considered a classic example of coevolution, a process in which mutually dependent species influence each other's evolution. Plants depend on hummingbirds for pollination, whereas hummingbirds rely on nectar for food. As a step towards understanding coevolution, this review focuses on the macroevolutionary consequences of plant-hummingbird interactions, a relatively underexplored area in the current literature.

Like an "espresso" but not like a "cappuccino": landscape metrics are useful for predicting coffee production at the farm level but not at the municipality level.

Coffee farms receive ecosystem services that rely on pollinators and pest predators. Landscape-scale processes regulate the flow of these biodiversity-based services. Consequently, the coffee farms' surrounding landscape impacts coffee production.

Integrating public engagement to intensify pollination services through ecological restoration.

Globally, human activities impose threats to nature and the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination. In this context, ecological restoration provides opportunities to create managed landscapes that maximize biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture, e.g.

Diel niche partitioning of a plant-hummingbird network in the Atlantic forest of Brazil.

Niche partitioning is an important mechanism that allows species to coexist. Within mutualistic interaction networks, diel niche partitioning, i.e.

Atlantic flower-invertebrate interactions: A data set of occurrence and frequency of floral visits.

Encounters between flowers and invertebrates are key events for the functioning of tropical forests. Assessing the structure of networks composed of the interactions between those partners leads to a better understanding of ecosystem functioning and the effects of environmental factors on ecological processes. Gathering such data is, however, costly and time-consuming, especially in the highly diverse tropics.

Data standardization of plant-pollinator interactions.

Background: Animal pollination is an important ecosystem function and service, ensuring both the integrity of natural systems and human well-being. Although many knowledge shortfalls remain, some high-quality data sets on biological interactions are now available. The development and adoption of standards for biodiversity data and metadata has promoted great advances in biological data sharing and aggregation, supporting large-scale studies and science-based public policies.

The structure of tropical bat-plant interaction networks during an extreme El Niño-Southern Oscillation event.

Interaction network structure reflects the ecological mechanisms acting within biological communities, which are affected by environmental conditions. In tropical forests, higher precipitation usually increases fruit production, which may lead frugivores to increase specialization, resulting in more modular and less nested animal-plant networks. In these ecosystems, El Niño is a major driver of precipitation, but we still lack knowledge of how species interactions change under this influence.

ATLANTIC POLLINATION: a data set of flowers and interaction with nectar-feeding vertebrates from the Atlantic Forest.

Flowering plant species and their nectar-feeding vertebrates exemplify some of the most remarkable biotic interactions in the Neotropics. In the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, several species of birds (especially hummingbirds), bats, and non-flying mammals, as well as one lizard feed on nectar, often act as pollinators and contribute to seed output of flowering plants. We present a dataset containing information on flowering plants visited by nectar-feeding vertebrates and sampled at 166 localities in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

Consumers' active choice behaviour promotes coevolutionary units in antagonistic networks.

Individual behaviour and local context can influence the evolution of ecological interactions and how they structure into networks. In trophic interactions, consumers can increase their fitness by actively choosing resources that they are more likely to explore successfully. Mathematical modelling is often employed in theoretical studies to understand the coevolutionary dynamics between consumers and resources.

Areas Requiring Restoration Efforts are a Complementary Opportunity to Support the Demand for Pollination Services in Brazil.

Crop pollination is one of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) that reconciles biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. NCP benefits vary across space, including among distinct political-administrative levels within nations. Moreover, initiatives to restore ecosystems may enhance NCP provision, such as crop pollination delivered by native pollinators.

Plant-centred sampling estimates higher beta diversity of interactions than pollinator-based sampling across habitats.

When describing plant-animal interaction networks, sampling can be performed using plant- or animal-centred approaches. Despite known effects of sampling on network structure, how samplings affect the estimates of interaction β-diversity across networks is still unresolved. We investigated how the sampling method affects the assessment of β-diversity of interactions, turnover and rewiring.

Ecological mechanisms explaining interactions within plant-hummingbird networks: morphological matching increases towards lower latitudes.

Interactions between species are influenced by different ecological mechanisms, such as morphological matching, phenological overlap and species abundances. How these mechanisms explain interaction frequencies across environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Consequently, we also know little about the mechanisms that drive the geographical patterns in network structure, such as complementary specialization and modularity.

Spatio-temporal effects of climate change on the geographical distribution and flowering phenology of hummingbird-pollinated plants.

Backgrounds And Aims: Tropical plant species are already suffering the effects of climate change and projections warn of even greater changes in the following decades. Of particular concern are alterations in flowering phenology, given that it is considered a fitness trait, part of plant species ecological niche, with potential cascade effects in plant-pollinator interactions. The aim of the study was to assess the potential impacts of climate change on the geographical distribution and flowering phenology of hummingbird-pollinated plants.

Correction to: Local drivers of the structure of a tropical bird‑seed dispersal network.

Unfortunately, the detailed description of the ESM material went wrong in the published version of the dataset.

ATLANTIC EPIPHYTES: a data set of vascular and non-vascular epiphyte plants and lichens from the Atlantic Forest.

Epiphytes are hyper-diverse and one of the frequently undervalued life forms in plant surveys and biodiversity inventories. Epiphytes of the Atlantic Forest, one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, have high endemism and radiated recently in the Pliocene. We aimed to (1) compile an extensive Atlantic Forest data set on vascular, non-vascular plants (including hemiepiphytes), and lichen epiphyte species occurrence and abundance; (2) describe the epiphyte distribution in the Atlantic Forest, in order to indicate future sampling efforts.

Local drivers of the structure of a tropical bird-seed dispersal network.

One of the major challenges in ecology is to understand the relative importance of neutral- and niche-based processes structuring species interactions within communities. The concept of neutral-based processes posits that network structure is a result of interactions between species based on their abundance. On the other hand, niche-based processes presume that network structure is shaped by constraints to interactions.

Survey dataset on mutualistic interactions among Mart. (Arecaceae) and floral and frugivorous visitors considering influence of neighborhood plant density and availability of resources.

The data are supporting the research article "Effects of neighborhood on pollination and seed dispersal of a threatened palm" (Santos et al., 2018). We recorded through focal observation mutualistic interactions with floral and frugivorous visitors and 11 individuals of the threatened palm in Brazil.

Estimating seed and pollen dispersal kernels from genetic data demonstrates a high pollen dispersal capacity for an endangered palm species.

Premise Of The Study: Seed and pollen dispersal are key processes shaping plant population dynamics and maintaining genetic diversity. The essence of these processes is the movement of propagules from a parental tree to the site of propagule establishment. The estimation of plant dispersal kernels has remained challenging due to the difficulty of making direct observations.

Comparative anatomy and morphology of nectar-producing Melastomataceae.

Background And Aims: Most neotropical Melastomataceae have bee-pollinated flowers with poricidal anthers. However, nectar rewards are known to be produced in about 80 species in eight genera from four different tribes. These nectar-producing species are pollinated by both vertebrates and invertebrates.