A sudden rustling in the trees, the peaceful silence of the forest shattered by a quavering hooting cry – an alarm call. High in the dense evergreen canopy of the Western Ghats, a lion-tailed macaque scrambles toward a ripening fig, only to be beaten by a flurry of wings – a Malabar grey hornbill has already claimed the prize.

In the silence of the rainforest, this moment might seem insignificant. But beneath it lies a fierce and fascinating competition playing out among India’s frugivores, one that shapes the very fabric of the forest.

Frugivores and their fruit wars

Image credit: A Malabar grey hornbill perches in the forest canopy. Picture by Amatya Sharma, provided to Greenauve.

In the treetops of India’s tropical rainforests, the fight for fruit is a daily drama. Fruiting trees are patchily distributed, and only a few species bear ripe fruit at any given time. When they do, they become hotbeds of activity and conflict. Frugivores, or fruit-eating animals, descend from all corners of the forest, often at the same time, competing to claim a meal before it vanishes.

This competition isn’t always peaceful. In the Western Ghats, fig and other fruiting trees act like seasonal magnets, drawing a crowd that includes hornbills, macaques, langurs, barbets, and even civets. Timing is everything: while birds like the Malabar grey hornbill arrive early and in groups to strip fruiting branches clean, more opportunistic feeders like macaques may use sheer agility or aggression to force others away. Smaller frugivores, including barbets, bulbuls, or mynas, often lose out, pushed to the periphery or forced to shift their feeding times to avoid direct clashes.

Some species adapt by specialising. The shy lion-tailed macaque prefers fishtail palms and wild nutmeg, fruits that ripen at different times and in different parts of the canopy. Meanwhile, the green imperial pigeon has been observed targeting isolated fruiting trees at dawn before larger birds arrive. But as habitat shrinks and fruiting trees decline, these strategies begin to fail, and the competition turns fiercer.

Strategy, timing and niche partitioning

Image credit: A Malabar giant squirrel feeding on fruit. Picture by Thanigaivel A., provided to Greenauve.

Still, the rainforest has never been a free-for-all. For much of its history, frugivores coexisted by adopting distinct foraging strategies, an elegant form of ecological compromise known as niche partitioning. Rather than engaging in constant head-to-head battles, many species have evolved to feed at different times of day, in different forest strata, or on different types of fruit, reducing direct competition and maintaining the forest’s functional harmony.

Take the Indian flying squirrel. A creature of the night, it slips silently through the upper canopy to feast on ripe fruit long after diurnal feeders have retreated. Meanwhile, Malabar giant squirrels prefer the mid-canopy, targeting specific trees whose fruiting schedules don’t always overlap with those of hornbills or macaques. Even birds show subtle partitioning; barbets are early risers, often feeding at dawn before larger-bodied birds, like the green imperial pigeon, arrive.

Fruit preferences also play a role. While hornbills seek out large, lipid-rich fruits such as wild nutmeg, smaller birds like bulbuls or koels tend toward softer or smaller fruits. These choices may seem minor, but together they help maintain a dynamic equilibrium in the canopy, one that allows dozens of frugivore species to share the same forest without constant clashes.

Trouble in the trees through fragmentation and competition

Image credit: Roads, including major highways, cut through these dense forests, inhibiting the movement of seed dispersers. Picture by Priya Ranganathan, provided to Greenauve.

That balance is now under threat. Forest fragmentation – a growing consequence of plantations, roads, and human settlements – is narrowing the menu and packing more competitors into smaller spaces. With fewer fruiting trees available and patch connectivity broken, frugivores are increasingly forced to overlap in both space and time, intensifying conflict over shrinking resources.

This pressure can already be seen in degraded patches where once-specialist feeders, like the Nilgiri langur or hornbills, are pushed into suboptimal diets or displaced entirely. Generalists like bonnet macaques and certain omnivorous birds adapt more easily, often dominating the scene and crowding out slower or more specialised feeders.

The impacts ripple across trophic levels. A study from the southern Western Ghats observed that large-seeded trees like Canarium strictum and Dysoxylum malabaricum, which depend on a narrow set of large-bodied frugivores, showed poor survival in fragmented habitats. These trees are losing their dispersers not just due to absence but due to competitive exclusion, where dominant frugivores monopolise food sources, pushing others out of the landscape.

With fewer safe zones to retreat to and fewer fruiting trees to feed from, frugivores must now fight harder, travel further, or adapt their diets – all signs of a system under strain.

Restoring space and food for forest frugivores

Even in the face of mounting pressure, the forest isn’t without hope. Across the Western Ghats, ecologists and conservationists are working to relieve competitive stress by restoring fruit availability and movement pathways for frugivores. These efforts aim to reweave the frayed ecological networks that once held the rainforest canopy together.

Image credit: Air bridges can facilitate animal movement between forest patches over busy roads. Picture by Priya Ranganathan, provided to Greenauve.

One such example comes from the Sharavati Valley in Karnataka’s Western Ghats, where lion-tailed macaques were cut off from key feeding grounds by a high-traffic highway. Forest authorities responded by building canopy bridges, and soon after, the macaques resumed crossing and reappeared at fruiting trees that had gone untouched for months.

Elsewhere, in the plantation landscapes of Valparai, conservation groups have collaborated with tea estates to plant native keystone species like Ficus, Cullenia, and Myristica in riparian corridors and estate margins. These green pathways serve as stepping stones, allowing frugivores to move more freely and reducing competition by broadening access to fruiting resources.

Long-term monitoring in these sites shows promising signs: increased frugivore visits, a broader mix of species, and early stages of natural regeneration in the surrounding forest.

A canopy worth protecting

Fruit in the rainforest isn’t just food – it’s currency, contested territory, and the lifeblood of the ecosystem. When too many mouths compete for too few trees, the complex forest web of life begins to unravel. Yet, as the work across the Western Ghats shows, it is possible to restore some of that balance by reconnecting forest patches, reintroducing native fruit trees, and giving each species space to find its rightful share.