Thread by @gustavoburin

Really, really, REALLY happy to share our latest publication that just came out in @ScienceMagazine with @paulo_prguima and @tbquental

science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…

Follow the small thread for a brief explanation!

#cienciabrasileira #brazilianscience #ForaBolsonaro

In this paper we (@tbquental, @paulo_prguima and I) explored if the way bird species interact with the plants they feed on depends on how stable the bird species are. But what do we mean by "stable" in this context?

Humans have different "lifespans", with some of us reaching quite old ages and others dying at a younger age. We also interact with other people with different patterns:

Extroverts, on one side, usually interact with many different people and are frequently the connecting point between many different groups, whereas shy people usually form strong bonds with only a few close friends.

Also, the elderly tend to meet many more people through their life than a young person. Following this train of thought, we can do a mind exercise and think of each of us as a different species.

Like us, different species have different longevities (over thousands or, more commonly, millions of years), and interact with other species according to different patterns.

Thus, these different longevities may influence the way species interact with each other, as they have more or less time to establish and maintain these interactions.

Much has been discovered about how species interactions are organised within communities, yet little is known about how these interaction networks are assembled in deep time scales (i.e. millions of years).

Thus, we decided to test whether there is any association between the longevity (or stability, as we call in the paper) in geological timescales and the interaction patterns that bird species show within seed-dispersal networks.

Using mathematical tools and data on the interactions between bird species and the plants they disperse, we found that species that are in the core of the interaction networks belong to lineages that are more stable over millions of years.

This means that bird species that are more stable either interact with more species of plants, or that brings groups of plants closer to one another, connecting different groups of species.

This relationship is even stronger in hotter and wetter environments, highlighting the effect of the abiotic environment in shaping the interaction between animals and plants in geological timescales.

Our results can be of key importance in understanding how these networks and ecosystem functions assemble through time and space, and also how they may respond to future human-mediated extinctions.

It is also followed by a very nice commentary by Carolina Bello and @elisabarretop

science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…

This paper corresponds to the last chapter of my dissertation, and I'm quite proud of it. I hope you all enjoy it!

Now with the proper twitter handle of @carobello58 (apologize for not knowing it before 😬)