TY  - JOUR
A1  - Neuschulz, Eike Lena
A1  - Mueller, Thomas
A1  - Schleuning, Matthias
A1  - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
T1  - Pollination and seed dispersal are the most threatened processes of plant regeneration
T2  - Scientific reports
N2  - Plant regeneration is essential for maintaining forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, which are globally threatened by human disturbance. Here we present the first integrative meta-analysis on how forest disturbance affects multiple ecological processes of plant regeneration including pollination, seed dispersal, seed predation, recruitment and herbivory. We analysed 408 pairwise comparisons of these processes between near-natural and disturbed forests. Human impacts overall reduced plant regeneration. Importantly, only processes early in the regeneration cycle that often depend on plant-animal interactions, i.e. pollination and seed dispersal, were negatively affected. Later processes, i.e. seed predation, recruitment and herbivory, showed overall no significant response to human disturbance. Conserving pollination and seed dispersal, including the animals that provide these services to plants, should become a priority in forest conservation efforts globally.
KW  - Conservation biology
KW  - Forest ecology
Y1  - 2016
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/46578
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-465782
SN  - 2045-2322
N1  - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
VL  - 6
IS  - Art. 29839
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
PB  - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
CY  - [London]
ER  -