1. Floodplain forests drive fruit-eating fish diversity at the Amazon Basin-scale.
- Author
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Correa SB, Coronado-Franco KV, Jézéquel C, Cantarute Rodrigues A, Evans KO, Granger JJ, Ter Steege H, Leão do Amaral I, de Souza Coelho L, Wittmann F, de Almeida Matos FD, de Andrade Lima Filho D, Salomão RP, Castilho CV, Guevara JE, Veiga Carim MJ, Phillips OL, Fernandez Piedade MT, Demarchi LO, Schöngart J, Cardenas Revilla JD, Pires Martins M, Irume MV, da Silva Guimarães JR, Ferreira Ramos J, Costa Quaresma A, Pitman NCA, Luize BG, Moraes de Leão Novo EM, Martins Venticinque E, Sanna Freire Silva T, Núñez Vargas P, Manzatto AG, Farias Costa Reis N, Terborgh J, Casula KR, Honorio Coronado EN, Montero JC, Monteagudo Mendoza A, Feldpausch TR, Machado Durgante F, Castaño Arboleda N, Marimon BS, Marimon-Junior BH, Killeen TJ, Vasquez R, Mostacedo B, Assis RL, Dantas do Amaral D, Householder JE, Simon MF, Brilhante de Medeiros M, Lima de Queiroz H, Lopes MA, Lima Magalhães JL, Stevenson PR, Barçante Ladvocat Cintra B, Araujo-Murakami A, Baker TR, Oliveira Feitosa Y, Mogollón HF, Duivenvoorden JF, Ferreira LV, de Toledo JJ, Comiskey JA, Lopes A, Damasco G, Vicentini A, Cornejo Valverde F, Gomes VHF, Alonso A, Dallmeier F, P de Aguiar DP, Gribel R, Licona JC, Villa Zegarra BE, Carneiro Guedes M, Cerón C, Thomas R, Milliken W, Campelo W, Albuquerque BW, Klitgaard B, Tello JS, Fuentes Claros A, Rivas-Torres G, Phillips JF, Hildebrand PV, Gonzales T, Vela CIA, Hoffman B, Flores BM, Pombo MM, Rocha M, Holmgren M, Cano A, Umaña MN, Casas LF, Balslev H, Urrego Giraldo LE, Bigorne R, Oberdorff T, Maldonado-Ocampo JA, Ortega H, Hidalgo M, Martens K, Torrente-Vilara G, Zuanon J, Acosta A, Agudelo E, Barrera Maure S, Bastos DA, Bogotá Gregory J, Cabeceira FG, Canto ALC, Carvajal-Vallejos FM, Carvalho LN, Cella-Ribeiro A, Covain R, Dias MS, Donascimiento C, Dória CRC, Duarte C, Ferreira EJG, Galuch AV, Giarrizzo T, Leitão RP, Lundberg JG, Maldonado M, Mojica JI, Montag LFA, Ohara W, Pires THS, Pouilly M, Prada-Pedreros S, Queiroz LJ, Rapp Py-Daniel L, Ribeiro FRV, Ríos Herrera R, Rodrigues Dos Anjos M, Lourenco IH, Sarmiento J, Sousa LM, Stegmann LF, Valdiviezo-Rivera J, Villa F, Yunoki T, and Tedesco PA
- Subjects
- Animals, Trees, Feeding Behavior physiology, Ecosystem, Fishes physiology, Rivers, Biodiversity, Fruit, Floods, Forests
- Abstract
Unlike most rivers globally, nearly all lowland Amazonian rivers have unregulated flow, supporting seasonally flooded floodplain forests. Floodplain forests harbor a unique tree species assemblage adapted to flooding and specialized fauna, including fruit-eating fish that migrate seasonally into floodplains, favoring expansive floodplain areas. Frugivorous fish are forest-dependent fauna critical to forest regeneration via seed dispersal and support commercial and artisanal fisheries. We implemented linear mixed effects models to investigate drivers of species richness among specialized frugivorous fishes across the ~6,000,000 km
2 Amazon Basin, analyzing 29 species from 9 families (10,058 occurrences). Floodplain predictors per subbasin included floodplain forest extent, tree species richness (309,540 occurrences for 2,506 species), water biogeochemistry, flood duration, and elevation, with river order controlling for longitudinal positioning along the river network. We observed heterogeneous patterns of frugivorous fish species richness, which were positively correlated with floodplain forest extent, tree species richness, and flood duration. The natural hydrological regime facilitates fish access to flooded forests and controls fruit production. Thus, the ability of Amazonian floodplain ecosystems to support frugivorous fish assemblages hinges on extensive and diverse seasonally flooded forests. Given the low functional redundancy in fish seed dispersal networks, diverse frugivorous fish assemblages disperse and maintain diverse forests; vice versa, diverse forests maintain more fish species, underscoring the critically important taxonomic interdependencies that embody Amazonian ecosystems. Effective management strategies must acknowledge that access to diverse and hydrologically functional floodplain forests is essential to ensure the long-term survival of frugivorous fish and, in turn, the long-term sustainability of floodplain forests., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.- Published
- 2025
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