A Reappraisal of the Fruit-Taking and Fruit-Handling Behaviors of Neotropical Birds

Abstract

Research on the fruit-taking and fruit-handling behaviors of birds flourished in the 1980s when empirical observations and experimental studies revealed that the feeding techniques of birds affect which fruits they eat and, ultimately, which seeds they disperse. Recent calls to incorporate natural history aspects into empirical studies and theoretical models to improve our understanding of the seed dispersal process bring some fresh air to the topic, given its potential to influence fruit choice by birds. Here we compile information scattered in the literature, some of which hard to access, to reveal broad patterns of fruit-taking and fruit-handling behaviors observed in the wild for 197 bird species representing a wide spectrum of the bird phylogeny (117 genera, 26 families). We tested the influence of phylogeny on fruit-taking and fruit-handling behaviors, and also investigate the previously unexplored relationship between the flexibility in fruit-taking and fruit-handling behaviors with body size and degree of frugivory (i.e., a measure of the importance of fruits in the diet). We are ultimately interested in stimulating further studies that incorporate the often neglected behaviors used by birds to take and handle fruits to investigate the reciprocal ecological and evolutionary consequences between frugivorous birds and plants.