“Who eats figs? Everybody,” wrote tropical biological Daniel Janzen in 1979. He meant that in tropical rainforests most, if not all, fruit-eating animals will consume figs — the false-fruit of the 750+ Ficus species — at some point in their lives. When I tried to quantify this two decades later, I found records of more than 1270 bird and mammal species eating figs. No other kinds of fruit sustain so much wildlife.

One reason for this is that, unlike most fruit, figs can be found year round. Ficus species therefore sustain birds and mammals through times of general fruit scarcity. As these animals disperse the seeds of thousands of other plant species, the fig trees are crucial to the health of tropical forests.

As my new book shows, research in forests in Africa, Asia and the Americas has shown that without figs, many species of wildlife would suffer…