A brief history of fruits and frugivores

摘要: In this paper we briefly review the evolutionary history of mutualistic interaction between angiosperms that produce fleshy fruits and their major consumers: frugivorous birds mammals. Fleshy eaten by these vertebrates are widely distributed throughout angiosperm phylogeny. Similarly, a diet has evolved independently many times in Bird dispersal is more common than mammal-dispersal all lineages angiosperms, suggest evolution bird may have facilitated frugivory primates. The diets fruit-eating bats overlap less with those other kinds vertebrates. With few exceptions, most families producing vertebrate-dispersed fruit appeared substantially earlier earth vertebrate consumers. It likely radiations plants animals occurred past 30 Ma, part driven geological changes also foraging behavior frugivores topographically complex landscapes. Overall, had ecological consequences for tropical Cenozoic Era. Loss services will strong negative impact on dynamics subtropical communities.