2025/08/27 by David García‐Callejas, Sandra Lavorel, Otso Ovaskainen +2 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Plant and animal studies #Species Distribution and Climate Change
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-63208-5
openalex publication_date 2025/08/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Species can directly and indirectly affect others across communities and habitats, yet the spatial scale over which such effects spread remains unclear. This uncertainty arises partly because the species traits and landscape structures allowing indirect effects to propagate may differ across scales. Here, we use a topological network metric, communicability, to explore the factors controlling spatial propagation of effects in a large-scale plant-frugivore network projected across the territory of Aotearoa New Zealand. We show that generalism, species prevalence, and morphological traits are important predictors of species’ capacity to propagate effects, but their importance differed across scales. Furthermore, native bird species (but not exotics) show a positive relationship between body size and their potential to propagate effects. Habitat composition is the most important landscape factor in our study, generating hotspots of effect propagation around forested areas, whereas landscapes containing a variety of habitats act as a buffer against propagation. Overall, our results indicate that species displaying specific sets of traits, including ubiquity, interaction generalism, and a combination of large body size and native status, are the most likely to propagate large-scale ecological impacts in the plant-frugivore communities studied, yet landscape properties may moderate this spread. Ecological effects, such as disturbances, have a spatial dimension, but what influences their spatial propagation is not fully understood. Here, the authors find generalist and widespread species are key to propagating effects spatially, mediated by landscape characteristics and species provenance.