3 Ecological interactions in published literature

Organisms in earth are not isolated. In contrast, every species depends at different degrees of some other species to survive, thrive and reproduce. These interactions between species forms the backbone of biodiversity and acts as the architectural foundation for ecosystems (Jordano 2016). As biological communities depend on those interactions for their existence, one of the focus of ecological research is to document specific interactions between organisms or to describe its underlying effects on the ecosystems. Interactions between species can exist in the form of predation, competition, commensalism, amensalism, mutualism, symbiosys and parasitism (Jordano 2016) forming complex, intertangled networks where single interactions have an effect over all the system (Tylianakis et al. 2008; Jordano 2016). Universal patterns on the topology and structure of such interaction networks have been recently described (Jordano 2016, Stouffer 2005, Jordano 2003). However, a serious limitation of available data on specific species interactions is limiting the testing and development of new hypothesis in this field of ecological research (Montoya et al. 2006).

Biotic interactions in ecological literature can be recorded mentioned as two main overlapping forms: Explicit and Implicit. The first ones tend to “explicitly” describe the species A - species B interactions inside the body text or inside the article in a Table. Example:

"free-ranging Aldabra tortoises eat the fallen fruits of the endangered Diospyros egrettarum (Ebenaceae)"

"The diet of P. tattersalli included at least 130 different plants (Table S1) belonging to 80 genera and 49 different families (Table 2)".

The second type of articles tend to “implicitly” describe the interaction in a more vage way and provide a reference soonafter to another article. Example :

"Pteropus_fruit bats (flying foxes) which play an important ecological role by pollinating forest ecosystems and dispersing seeds as they forage for nectar, pollen, and fruit [1]" ;

"Fruits, which are small black one-seeded drupes, ripe from September to December when they are actively consumed by a wide array of small or mid-size birds, many of them migratory [11]".

In general terms, titles of articles providing “explicit” interactions are focused on describing a particular interaction between taxa:

("Bat-Fruit Interactions Are More Specialized in Shaded-Coffee Plantations than in Tropical Mountain Cloud Forest Fragments")

whereas “implicit” providing articles tend to describe research on the general ecological process that involve at some way biotic interactions:

("Remnant Trees Affect Species Composition but Not Structure of Tropical Second-Growth Forest")

Both “explicit” and “implicit” articles distance from other ecological articles by the mention of specific words related to the biotic interaction in question (Appendix Table 2), and with smaller differences between them (e.g. Articles with “Implicit” interactions tend to obviate mentions of taxa at the species level or those are mentioned for just one side of the interaction). Articles with explicit mentions of interactions acts as primary data sources whereas articles with implicit interactions will provide relevant information on the topic and useful crossrerences towards articles with primary data.