Cascading effects of contemporaneous defaunation on tropical forest communities

摘要: Defaunation, driven by hunting and habitat fragmentation, poses a threat to wildlife in tropical forests worldwide is expected have cascading effects on other organisms, particularly plant communities. This review summarizes empirical evidence from 42 studies the indirect of defaunation plants, focusing altered plant–animal interactions, resulting population demography, finally, community-level changes composition diversity. confirms, as previously documented, that larger-seeded species consistently experience reduced primary seed dispersal, increased seedling aggregation around parent trees, result defaunation. Reduced predation herbivory are also associated with defaunation, some cases countering negative dispersal. The net these led either higher or lower recruitment, depending species. Defaunated communities show consistent shifts toward richness, dominance, More research integrating all processes dispersal through recruitment required mechanistically link interactions community composition.