Aim Plant recruitment involves both stochastic and deterministic processes. Recruits may establish independently or interact nonrandomly with canopy plants. We explore this deterministic aspect by testing whether recruitment patterns are influenced by the phylogenetic history of canopy and recruiting plants. Since the effect of canopy plants in recruitment can be positive (facilitation), negative (competition) or neutral, we a...

Aim Plant reliance on animal mutualists is expected to decrease with latitude owing to increasing environmental instability. As a consequence, more erratic animal pollination in the temperate zones than in the tropics could translate into lower efficiency in pollen transfer, and thus increasing pollen wastage. Despite the relevance of this hypothesis for plant reproductive evolution, the implications of a proposed latitudinal...

Similarity among species in traits related to ecological interactions is frequently associated with common ancestry. Thus, closely related species usually interact with ecologically similar partners, which can be reinforced by diverse co‐evolutionary processes. The effect of habitat fragmentation on the phylogenetic signal in interspecific interactions and correspondence between plant and animal phylogenies is, however, unknow...