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Frugivores and seed dispersal

  • Book
  • © 1986

Overview

Editors:
  1. Alejandro Estrada
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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Theodore H. Fleming
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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: Tasks for Vegetation Science (TAVS, volume 15)

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Table of contents (32 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XIII
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  2. Plant strategies

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction

      • Alejandro Estrada, Theodore H. Fleming
      Pages 3-4

    3. Vertebrate-dispersed plants: why they don’t behave the way they should

      • Carlos M. Herrera
      Pages 5-18

    4. A seven-year study of individual variation in fruit production in tropical bird-dispersed tree species in the family Lauraceae

      • Nathaniel T. Wheelwright
      Pages 19-35

    5. Spatial components of fruit display in understory trees and shrubs

      • Julie Sloan Denslow, Timothy C. Moermond, Douglas J. Levey
      Pages 37-44

    6. Seed deposition patterns: influence of season, nutrients, and vegetation structure

      • Edmund W. Stiles, Douglas W. White
      Pages 45-54

    7. Foliar ‘flags’ for avian frugivores: signal or serendipity?

      • Mary F. Willson, William G. Hoppes
      Pages 55-69

    8. Dispersal of seeds by animals: effect on light controlled dormancy in Cecropia obtusifolia

      • C. VaÁZquez-Yanes, A. Orozco-Segovia
      Pages 71-77

  3. Frugivore strategies

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79
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    2. Introduction

      • Alejandro Estrada, Theodore H. Fleming
      Pages 81-83

    3. Selection on plant fruiting traits by brown capuchin monkeys: a multivariate approach

      • Charles H. Janson, Edmund W. Stiles, Douglas W. White
      Pages 83-92

    4. Frugivory by howling monkeys (Aluoatta palliata) at Los Tuxtlas, Mexico: dispersal and fate of seeds

      • Alejandro Estrada, Rosamond Coates-Estrada
      Pages 93-104

    5. Opportunism versus specialization: the evolution of feeding strategies in frugivorous bats

      • Theodore H. Fleming
      Pages 105-118

    6. Inter-relations between frugivorous vertebrates and pioneer plants: Cecropia, birds and bats in French Guyana

      • Pierre Charles-Dominique
      Pages 119-135

    7. The influence of morphology on fruit choice in neotropical birds

      • Timothy C. Moermond, Julie S. Denslow, Douglas J. Levey, Eduardo C. Santana
      Pages 137-146

    8. Methods of seed processing by birds and seed deposition patterns

      • Douglas J. Levey
      Pages 147-158

    9. Some aspects of avian frugivory in a north temperate area relevant to tropical forest

      • David W. Snow, Barbara K. Snow
      Pages 159-164

  4. The consequences of seed dispersal

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 165-165
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    2. Introduction

      • Alejandro Estrada, Theodore H. Fleming
      Pages 167-168
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Keywords

About this book

A wide variety of plants, ranging in size from forest floor herbs to giant canopy trees, rely on animals to disperse their seeds. Typical values of the proportion of tropical vascular plants that produce fleshy fruits and have animal-dispersed seeds range from 50-90%, depending on habitat. In this section, the authors discuss this mutualism from the plant's perspective. Herrera begins by challenging the notion that plant traits traditionally interpreted as being the product of fruit-frugivore coevolution really are the outcome of a response-counter-response kind of evolutionary process. He uses examples of congeneric plants living in very different biotic and abiotic environments and whose fossilizable characteristics have not changed over long periods of time to argue that there exists little or no basis for assuming that gradualistic change and environmental tracking characterizes the interactions between plants and their vertebrate seed dispersers. A common theme that runs through the papers by Herrera, Denslow et at. , and Stiles and White is the importance of the 'fruiting environment' (i. e. the spatial relationships of conspecific and non-conspecific fruiting plants) on rates of fruit removal and patterns of seed rain. Herrera and Denslow et at. point out that this environment is largely outside the control of individual plant species and, as a result, closely coevolved interactions between vertebrates and plants are unlikely to evolve.

Reviews

`This book is a must for every seed dispersal ecologist, and is, therefore, higly recommended.'
S. Godschalk, South American Journal on Zoology, 1989.

`... this book is a valuable source of information and methodological approaches for all students who are and will be attracted by this field of modern ecology.'
L. Klimes, Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomica, Vol. 24, 1989.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Frugivores and seed dispersal

  • Editors: Alejandro Estrada, Theodore H. Fleming

  • Series Title: Tasks for Vegetation Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4812-9

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Dr W. Junk Publishers, Dordrecht 1986

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-6193-543-8Published: 30 June 1986

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-94-010-8633-2Published: 26 September 2011

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-009-4812-9Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 0167-9406

  • Series E-ISSN: 1875-130X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 392

  • Topics: Plant Sciences

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