DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0kh67
title: Data from: The role of trait combination in the conspicuousness of fruit display among bird-dispersed plants

description: In visually-driven seed dispersal mutualisms, natural selection should
 promote plant strategies that maximize fruit visibility to dispersers.
 Plants might increase seed dispersal profitability by increasing
 conspicuousness of fruit display, understood as a plant strategy to
 maximize fruit detectability by seed dispersers. The role of different
 plant traits in fruit choice and consumption by seed dispersers has been
 broadly studied. However, there is no clear evidence about the importance
 of the traits that increase conspicuousness of fruit display. Because
 strategies to maximize conspicuousness of fruit display are diverse, and
 usually are expected to be costly, we would expect that individual plant
 species will produce an efficient combination of traits.We explored this
 prediction with 62 fleshy-fruited plant species of a subtropical Andean
 forest (Southern Yungas), and using a large dataset of fruit consumption
 by birds (4,476 records). The conspicuousness of fruit display was
 characterized by both fruit and plant traits including chromatic contrast,
 size, exposure, aggregation, and crop size of fruits. We also considered
 phylogenetic effects on phenotypic variation.Fruit consumption was
 explained by fruit chromatic contrast depending on fruit crop size. These
 traits revealed low phylogenetic effects, with the exception of four plant
 clades at different levels in the phylogenetic tree. Negative correlations
 between pairs of traits support our assumption that fruit display traits
 are costly, suggesting natural selection favours parsimonious evolutionary
 pathways. Plant species seem rely on conspicuousness of fruit display by a
 combination of traits that might minimize costs of fruit display. This
 appears adaptively relevant to improve communication with mutualistic
 animals, to increase fruit consumption in a community context and,
 ultimately, to enhance the profitability of seed dispersal.
description: List of plant species
 and traitsTable S1. Summary of
 fruit display traits from plant species in a subtropical Andean montane
 forest of NW Argentina (Southern Yungas). Fruit consumption is a relative
 frequency of fruit consumption for each plant species by the community of
 fruit-eating birds (see Methods); Nc (not consumption) indicates fruit
 species that are not usually eaten by birds , while a hyphen indicates
 species eaten by birds but without data in our databases. Fruit size is
 the mean fresh-fruit mass expressed in grams. Fruit colour type is
 described as it is perceived by humans (i.e., related to hue). Fruit
 chromatic contrast (ΔS) is expressed in unities of just noticeable
 difference (JND) between the fruit and the corresponding leaves of the
 species (background) (see Methods). Fruit exposure has two categories:
 Exposed (pendulums, erect and terminals) and Unexposed (sessile fruits and
 fruits that are not exposed away from the contiguous foliage). Fruit
 aggregation expresses the mean number of fruit in discrete and
 differentiable groups. Fruit crop size is the mean number of fruits of
 each plant species, classified into five categories: 1 (1-10 fruits), 2
 (11-100), 3 (101-1000), 4 (1001-10000) and 5 ( &gt;10000). See Methods for
 details. Plant systematics follows Instituto de Botánica Darwinion
 (2015).FE-2016-01072-R2-Appendix-S1.docMethods for collection and analysis for data on fruit reflectanceMethods for collection and analysis for data on fruit reflectance.FE-2016-01072-R2-Appendix-S2.docBases and criteria for fruit consumption dataThe first step in the multi-step process we used to make raw data on fruit consumption comparable, consisted in the delimitation of datasets that were homogeneous with respect to their geographic location, forest type, collection date and sampling technique. This entailed, on the one hand, the split of some large raw datasets (e.g. covering various types of forests, or more than one season) and, on the other, the grouping of similar opportunistic records from different sources in a same dataset.FE-2016-01072-R2-Appendix-S3.docCompeting models in the GLM procedureCompeting models in the GLM procedure to determine the importance of fruit conspicuousness on fruit consumption by birds.FE-2016-01072-R2-Appendix-S4.docConstruction of the phylogenetic treeWe constructed the meta-tree of plants from trees stored in Phylomatic (Webb & Donoghue 2005) and using the R package taxize (Chamberlain & Szöcs 2013). To resolve relationships not defined by Phylomatic for Muehlenbeckia and Phoradendron genera, and for the Myrsinaceae family, we used information from the webpage of the Missouri Botanical Garden (http://tropicos.org/). Phylogenetic relationships among Solanaceae (Solanum, Salpichroa, Vassobia, Dunalia, Eriolarynx and Iochroma) were resolved using trees from Levin, Watson & Bohs (2005), Bohs (2007), Weese & Bohs (2007), Olmstead et al. (2008) and Särkinen et al. (2013). Phylogenetic relationships among Celtidaceae, Myrtaceae and Rosaceae were resolved using tree from Song et al. (2001), Lucas et al (2007), and Potter et al. (2007), respectively.FE-2016-01072-R2-Appendix-S5.docR script for estimating relationships between fruit display traitsR script for estimating relationships between fruit display traitstraitrels.R