Frugivores and fruit syndromes: Differences in patterns at the genus and species level

ences in patterns at the genus and species level.- Oikos 66: 472-482. Comparative studies have suggested that fruit traits, such as color, size, and protec-tion, have evolved as covarying character complexes ("dispersal syndromes") in response to selection by frugivorous dispersers. However, many comparative studies of disperser-specific syndromes have used species as sampling units, a method which implicitly assumes that character complexes evolve de novo in each species. This approach overestimates the number of times a character complex has evolved be-cause covariation that results from common ancestry (plesiomorphy) is confounded with covariation across independent lineages (convergence). We compiled data on fleshy fruit traits from five regional floras to test the hypothesis that fruit traits form character complexes which covary independently of phylogeny (i.e. across lineages). Our results suggest that such character complexes are rare, and that analyses of covariation among these character complexes are extremely sensitive to the in-vestigator's choice of sampling unit. When syndromes derived from observations of the foraging behavior of frugivores are analyzed using species as sampling units, our data show significant associations among traits at four out of five locations. I