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1. Agricultural activities such as crop production and cattle ranching are
rapidly replacing forests worldwide, especially in the tropics. Resulting
forest loss can adversely affect biodiversity in many ways, including
trajectories of community reassembly, community composition, forest
structural profiles, and taxonomic diversity. Yet, effects of forest loss
on specific ecosystem functions remain limited. Processes closely linked
with tree reproduction, such as pollination and seed dispersal are of
paramount importance for many ecological functions in tropical forests.
Disruption in these processes is known to delay or change forest
regeneration, diversity, and structural dynamics. 2. To explore how
reproductive and dispersal traits are being altered by landscape-scale
deforestation, we surveyed and compiled trait data for tree communities in
20 tropical Atlantic rainforest remnants in northeastern Brazil, across a
gradient of deforested landscapes, each retaining 3 to 93% forest cover.
3. The functional richness of reproductive plant attributes decreased as
the amount of forest cover decreased, while divergence increased along the
same gradient. Loss of forest cover disproportionately affected certain
dispersal and reproductive attributes, with most heavily impacted
functional attributes including: brief flowering duration, hermaphrodite
sexual system, and zoochoric dispersal mode. We identified a clear
threshold at 25-30% of forest cover, below which, reproductive attributes
disappeared more quickly than expect from forest remnants. 4. Synthesis.
Deforestation may impair tree community functional diversity, particularly
by decreasing the number of functions and increasing certain functional
reproductive attributes that are particularly successful in disturbed
habitats. Under scenarios of extensive deforestation, changes to
reproductive and dispersal trait profile of forest communities suggest
that profound modifications in the availability of floral and seed
resources are likely to be substantial. Such extensive changes to food
supply of pollinating and dispersing animals suggest carry-over effects to
the fauna of these important forest systems.
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