Format: ORAL

Andressa Cabral1, Yaowu Xing2, Renske E. Onstein1,3

1 German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle – Jena - Leipzig 2 Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China 3 Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Darwinweg 2, 2333CR Leiden, the Netherlands

Fleshy-fruited plants and their fruit-eating and seed-dispersing animals (frugivores) have originated millions of years ago, but it remains unclear when and where their mutualistic interactions evolved, and whether this led to co-diversification and co-adaptation of frugivory-related traits. Here, we hypothesize that shifts in diversification and trait evolution rates of tropical, fleshy-fruited plant lineages coincided with the evolution of frugivorous vertebrate lineages and their traits, as a result of co-evolutionary selective pressures from interacting partners. To test this hypothesis, we focus on three pantropical keystone plant families comprising 6,200 species with vertebrate-dispersed fruits: custard apples (Annonaceae), palms (Arecaceae) and mulberries and figs (Moraceae). We align their evolution with that of their primary seed dispersers based on data from extant and Late Quaternary mammals and birds (~ 5,200 species). Because fruit and seed size are constrained by frugivore gape widths and body sizes, with the largest fruits depending on dispersal by the largest animals, we also collected information on fruit and/or seed sizes and body sizes/gape widths/diet. We integrated these data in a phylogenetic framework and used comparative methods to identify the origin and biogeography of major frugivore lineages and their food plants. Using diversification and trait evolution models, we showed that several plant and frugivore lineages co-diversified in the Cenozoic (i.e., last 66 million years), with increased rates of diversification coinciding with increases in fruit and body size evolution. These findings suggest that reciprocal adaptations in frugivory-related morphological traits between plants and frugivores have influenced their mutualistic-dependent co-diversification across the tropical realms, explaining high contemporary diversity and trait matching in tropical rainforests.