Modeling the impact of wild harvest on plant–disperser mutualisms

Kevin De Angeli, Eeman Abbasi, Alan Gan, Daniel J. Ingram, Xingli Giam and Charlotte H. Chang

Ecological Modelling, 2021, vol. 439, issue C

Abstract: Across the tropics, millions of rural families rely on non-timber forest products for protein, subsistence, and other financial or cultural uses. Often, communities exploit biotically dispersed trees and their mammalian or avian seed disperser. Empirical findings have indicated that many plant and animal resources are overexploited, presenting challenges for biodiversity conservation and sustainable rural livelihoods. However, there has been limited research investigating the impacts of harvest that targets both seed dispersers and zoochoric trees. We formulated a discrete-time model for interacting seed dispersers and plants under harvest. We found that the more dependent species will dictate the sustainable threshold level of harvest, and that higher levels of dependence could drive the species pair to local extinction. We illustrated the application of sensitivity analysis to our modeling framework in order to facilitate future analyses and applications using this approach.

Keywords: Quantitative ecology; Conservation science; Tropical forest; Coupled human natural systems; Harvesting model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:439:y:2021:i:c:s0304380020303951

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2020.109328

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