Project Timeline: 2017 - 2025

People: Rintu Mandal, Abhishek Gopal, Arpitha Jayanth, Himanshu Lad, Natasha Desai, Anand Osuri, Divya Mudappa, Saniya Chaplod, T. R. Shankar Raman, Rohit Naniwadekar

Collaborators: Navendu Page, Sartaj Ghuman, Jahnavi Joshi, Vatcharavee Sriprasertsil, Bee Choo Strange, Vijak Chimchome

Funding: Scientific Engineering and Research Board, International Foundation of Science, Wildlife Conservation Trust, Arvind Datar, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, M.M. Muthiah Research Foundation, Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre, Hornbill Research Foundation, SHERA Public Company Limited, The Rufford Foundation, Rauf Ali Fellowship, Rohit, Deepti Sobti and Uday Kumar

What We Do?

Understanding how species coexist in local tropical communities has been a central question in ecology. Studies have highlighted that biotic interactions, such as competition, are likely to play a key role compared to abiotic factors in structuring communities at a local scale. By comparing plant-frugivore communities with varying levels of complexity, we aim to understand the fruit choice behaviour by avian frugivores, niche width and overlap patterns in multiple dimensions, how such overlaps are influenced by resource availability and traits of interacting species, and finally, how the structure of plant-frugivore communities is influenced by assemblage-level frugivore species richness.

Why This Matters?

Our study is among the few field-based studies to control for abiotic factors, such as environmental and phylogenetic effects, while examining the effects of biotic interactions (reflected in change in species richness) on the frugivore fruit choice, niche width and overlap patterns, and plant-frugivore community organisation in the tropical wet forests.

Key Findings

• The role of fruit and seed morphology is more prevalent in frugivore fruit selection.

• Frugivores in species-rich assemblages exhibit greater dietary specialization.

• Plant-frugivore networks become less connected and nested, but more modular and specialised with increased frugivore diversity.

Publications

1. Naniwadekar, R., Gopal, A., Mandal, R., Jayanth, A., Sriprasertsil, V., Ghuman, S., ... & Joshi, J. (2025). Effects of frugivore species pool and seed size on the diversity and functional composition of frugivores visiting fruiting trees. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292(2056). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.1775