Dispersal

Animal dispersal

A wide variety of animals aid in the dispersal of seeds, fruits, and diaspores. Many birds and mammals, ranging in size from mice and kangaroo rats to elephants, act as dispersers when they eat fruits and diaspores. In the tropics, chiropterochory (dispersal by large bats such as flying foxes, Pteropus) is particularly important. Fruits adapted to these animals are relatively large and drab in colour with large seeds and a striking (often rank) odour. Such fruits are accessible to bats because of the pagoda-like structure of the tree canopy, fruit placement on the main trunk, or suspension from long stalks that hang free of the foliage. Examples include mangoes, guavas, breadfruit, carob, and several fig species. In South Africa a desert melon (Cucumis humifructus) participates in a symbiotic relationship with aardvarks—the animals eat the fruit for its water content and bury their own dung, which contains the seeds, near their burrows.

Additionally, furry terrestrial mammals are the agents most frequently involved in epizoochory, the inadvertent carrying by animals of dispersal units. Burlike fruits, or those diaspores provided with spines, hooks, claws, bristles, barbs, grapples, and prickles, are genuine hitchhikers, clinging tenaciously to their carriers. Their functional shape is achieved in various ways: in cleavers, or goose grass (Galium aparine), and in enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana), the hooks are part of the fruit itself; in common agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria), the fruit is covered by a persistent calyx (the sepals, parts of the flower, which remain attached beyond the usual period) equipped with hooks; and in wood avens (Geum urbanum), the persistent styles have hooked tips. Other examples are bur marigolds, or beggar’s-ticks (Bidens species); buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum); burdock (Arctium); Acaena; and many Medicago species. The last-named, with dispersal units highly resistant to damage from hot water and certain chemicals (dyes), have achieved wide global distribution through the wool trade. A somewhat different principle is employed by the so-called trample burrs, said to lodge themselves between the hooves of large grazing mammals. Examples are mule grab (Proboscidea) and the African grapple plant (Harpagophytum). In water burrs, such as those of the water chestnut Trapa, the spines should probably be considered as anchoring devices.

Birds, being preening animals, rarely carry burlike diaspores on their bodies. They do, however, transport the very sticky (viscid) fruits of Pisonia, a tropical tree of the four-o’clock family, to distant Pacific islands in this way. Small diaspores, such as those of sedges and certain grasses, may also be carried in the mud sticking to waterfowl and terrestrial birds.

Synzoochory, deliberate carrying of diaspores by animals, is practiced when birds carry diaspores in their beaks. The European mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) deposits the viscid seeds of mistletoe (Viscum album) on potential host plants when, after a meal of the berries, it whets its bill on branches or simply regurgitates the seeds. The North American (Phoradendron) and Australian (Amyema) mistletoes are dispersed by various birds, and the comparable tropical species of the plant family Loranthaceae by flower-peckers (of the bird family Dicaeidae), which have a highly specialized gizzard that allows seeds to pass through but retains insects. Plants may also profit from the forgetfulness and sloppy habits of certain nut-eating birds that cache part of their food but neglect to recover everything or that drop units on their way to a hiding place. Best known in this respect are the nutcrackers (Nucifraga), which feed largely on the “nuts” of beech, oak, walnut, chestnut, and hazelnut; the jays (Garrulus), which hide hazelnuts and acorns; the nuthatches; and the California woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), which may embed literally thousands of acorns, almonds, and pecan nuts in bark fissures or holes of trees. Rodents may aid in dispersal by stealing the embedded diaspores and burying them. In Germany, an average jay may transport about 4,600 acorns per season, over distances of up to 4 km (2.5 miles).

Most ornithochores (plants with bird-dispersed seeds) have conspicuous diaspores attractive to such fruit-eating birds as thrushes, pigeons, barbets (members of the bird family Capitonidae), toucans (family Ramphastidae), and hornbills (family Bucerotidae), all of which either excrete or regurgitate the hard part undamaged. Such diaspores have a fleshy, sweet, or oil-containing edible part; a striking colour (often red or orange); no pronounced smell; protection against being eaten prematurely, in the form of acids and tannins that are present only in the green fruit; protection of the seed against digestion, afforded by bitterness, hardness, or the presence of poisonous compounds; permanent attachment; and, finally, absence of a hard outer cover. In contrast to bat-dispersed diaspores, they occupy no special position on the plant. Examples are rose hips, plums, dogwood fruits, barberry, red currant, mulberry, nutmeg fruits, figs, blackberries, and others. The natural and abundant occurrence of Euonymus, which is a largely tropical genus, in temperate Europe and Asia, can be understood only in connection with the activities of birds. Birds also contributed substantially to the repopulation with plants of the Krakatoa island group in Indonesia after the catastrophic volcanic eruption there in 1883. Birds have made Lantana (originally American) a pest in Indonesia and Australia; the same is true of black cherries (Prunus serotina) in parts of Europe, Rubus species in Brazil and New Zealand, and olives (Olea europaea) in Australia.

Many intact fruits and seeds can serve as fish bait—those of Sonneratia, for example, for the catfish Arius maculatus. Certain Amazon River fishes react positively to the audible “explosions” of the ripe fruits of Eperua rubiginosa. The largest freshwater wetlands in the world, found in Brazil’s Pantanal, become inundated with seasonal floods at a time when many plants are releasing their fruits. Pacu fish (Metynnis) feed on submerged and floating fruits and disperse the seeds when they defecate. It is thought that at least one plant species (Bactris glaucescens) relies exclusively on pacu for seed dispersal.

Fossil evidence indicates that saurochory, dispersal by reptiles, is very ancient. The giant Galapagos tortoise is important for the dispersal of local cacti and tomatoes, and iguanas are known to eat and disperse a number of smaller fruits, including the iguana hackberry (Celtis iguanaea). The name alligator apple, for Annona glabra, refers to its method of dispersal, an example of saurochory.

Wind dispersal

Winged fruits are most common in trees and shrubs, such as maple, ash, elm, birch, alder, and dipterocarps (a family of about 600 species of Old World tropical trees). The one-winged propeller type, as found in maple, is called a samara. When fruits have several wings on their sides, rotation may result, as in rhubarb and dock species. Sometimes accessory parts form the wings—for example, the bracts (small green leaflike structures that grow just below flowers) in linden (Tilia).

Many fruits form plumes, some derived from persisting and ultimately hairy styles, as in clematis, avens, and anemones; some from the perianth, as in the sedge family (Cyperaceae); and some from the pappus, a calyx structure, as in dandelion and Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon (Tragopogon). In woolly fruits and seeds, the pericarp or the seed coat is covered with cottonlike hairs—e.g., willow, poplar or cottonwood, cotton, and balsa. In some cases, the hairs may serve double duty in that they function in water dispersal as well as in wind dispersal.

Poppies have a mechanism in which the wind has to swing the slender fruitstalk back and forth before the seeds are thrown out through pores near the top of the capsule. The inflated indehiscent pods of Colutea arborea, a steppe plant, represent balloons capable of limited air travel before they hit the ground and become windblown tumbleweeds.

Other forms of dispersal

Geocarpy is defined as either the production of fruits underground, as in the arum lilies (Stylochiton and Biarum), in which the flowers are already subterranean, or the active burying of fruits by the mother plant, as in the peanut (Arachis hypogaea). In the American hog peanut (Amphicarpa bracteata), pods of a special type are buried by the plant and are cached by squirrels later on. Kenilworth ivy (Cymbalaria), which normally grows on stone or brick walls, stashes its fruits away in crevices after strikingly extending the flower stalks. Not surprisingly, geocarpy is most often encountered in desert plants; however, it also occurs in violet species, in subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum), and in begonias (Begonia hypogaea) of the African rainforest.

Barochory, the dispersal of seeds and fruits by gravity alone, is demonstrated by the heavy fruits of horse chestnut.