Frugivorous fish play a prominent role in seed dispersal and reproductive dynamics of plant communities in riparian and floodplain habitats of tropical regions worldwide. In Neotropical wetlands, many plant species have fleshy fruits and synchronize their fruiting with the flood season, when fruit-eating fish forage in forest and savannahs for periods of up to 7 months. We conducted a comprehen...

Seed dispersal creates the initial spatial distribution of individuals in a population and in conjunction with the mating system influences spatial patterns of relatedness. This spatial template of related individuals sets the stage for all subsequent density-dependent and frequency-dependent interactions. In this study we document how ant-mediated seed dispersal affects the number and relatedn...

1. Plant fecundity and seed dispersal often depend on environmental variables that vary in space. Hence, plant ecologists need to quantify spatial environmental effects on fecundity and dispersal. 2. We present an approach to estimate and model two types of spatial environmental effects: source effects cause fecundity and dispersal to vary as a function of a source's local environment, whereas ...

Plant regeneration is essential for maintaining forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, which are globally threatened by human disturbance. Here we present the first integrative meta-analysis on how forest disturbance affects multiple ecological processes of plant regeneration including pollination, seed dispersal, seed predation, recruitment and herbivory. We analysed 408 pairwise compa...

Habitat loss can alter animal movements and disrupt animal seed dispersal mutualisms; however, its effects on spatial patterns of seed dispersal are not well understood. To explore the effects of habitat loss on seed dispersal distances and seed dispersion (aggregation), we created a spatially explicit, individual-based model of an animal dispersing seeds (SEADS-Spatially Explicit Animal Disper...

Weed control through crop rotation has mainly been studied in a nonspatial context. However, weed seeds are often spread beyond the crop field by a variety of vectors. For weed control to be successful, weed management should thus be evaluated at the landscape level. In this paper we assess how seed dispersal affects the interactions between crop rotation and landscape heterogeneity schemes wit...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Dispersal and establishment ability can influence evolutionary processes such as geographic isolation, adaptive divergence and extinction probability. Through these population-level dynamics, dispersal ability may also influence macro-evolutionary processes such as species distributions and diversification. This study examined patterns of evolution of dispersal-related fruit...

—Demographic models of tree populations assume that seed availability does not depend on the populations themselves. We develop models to assess the consequences of fecundity and dispersal for population structure and diversity. Results show that population structure and reproductive success are importantly affected by seed production and dispersal for realistic parameterization of time scales ...

The ecology of seed dispersal is critical to understand the patterns of distribution and abundance of plant species. We investigated seed dispersal aspects associated with the high abundance of Buchenavia tomentosa in the Serra Azul State Park (PESA). We estimated fruit production and conducted fruit removal experiments. We carried out diurnal and nocturnal observations on frugivory as well as ...

Our understanding of processes underlying plant recruitment emerges from species and habitats that are widely distributed at regional and global scales. However, the applicability of dispersal-recruitment models and the role of dispersal limitation versus microsite limitation have not been examined for specialized habitats. In patchy, freshwater Myristica swamp forests (Western Ghats, India), w...