Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:04:49.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Origin and deposition sites influence seed germination and seedling survival of Manilkara zapota: implications for long-distance, animal-mediated seed dispersal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

Georgina O'Farrill ,
Colin A. Chapman  and
Andrew Gonzalez
Georgina O'Farrill*
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A1B1
Colin A. Chapman
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 and Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, USA
Andrew Gonzalez
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 and Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, USA
*
*Correspondence Fax: 1+514-3985069 Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The distribution and dynamics of plant populations depend on the recruitment of young individuals, which is influenced by seed production, animal seed dispersal, dispersal distance, and the deposition of seeds in favourable places for seed germination/establishment and seedling survival. In particular, seeds dispersed over long distances will likely encounter new environmental conditions that occur at large spatial scales, with seed and seedling survival influenced by the adaptation of plant populations to soil and climate conditions. In this paper, it is hypothesized that seed germination and seedling survival probabilities depend on seed origin and deposition sites. A reciprocal seed and seedling transplant experiment was carried out with zapote seeds (Manilkara zapota) to determine the effect of origin and deposition sites on seed germination and seedling survival over a year in the Greater Calakmul Region of Mexico. Two origin and two deposition sites were selected that show different soil moisture levels within the habitat of the Baird's tapir, a major seed disperser of M. zapota seeds. The results show that sites of origin and deposition influenced seed germination and seedling survival probabilities. This suggests that the displacement of seeds far from parent trees, while potentially reducing intraspecific competition, does not ensure their survival, and that seeds need to be deposited in microsites within their environmental tolerance for dispersal to be successful. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes the importance of field experiments to provide strong inference about the effects of environmental conditions on recruitment and distribution of plant species.

Keywords

local adaptationManilkara zapotareciprocal transplant experimentseed dispersalseed germination
Type
Research Article
Information
Seed Science Research , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 305 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abizaid, C. and Coomes, O.T. (2004) Land use and forest fallowing dynamics in seasonally dry tropical forests of the southern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Land Use Policy 21, 71–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, G. and Lechowicz, M.J. (1991) The ecology and genetics of fitness in forest plants. I. Environmental heterogeneity measured by explant trials. Journal of Ecology 79, 663–685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradford, M.G. and Westcott, D.A. (2010) Consequences of southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius, L.) gut passage and deposition pattern on the germination of rainforest seeds. Oecologia 35, 325–333.Google Scholar
Bullock, J.M. and Nathan, R. (2008) Plant dispersal across multiple scales: linking models and reality. Journal of Ecology 96, 567–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bustamante, R.O. and Simonetti, J.A. (2000) Seed predation and seedling recruitment in plants: the effect of the distance between parents. Plant Ecology 147, 173–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byars, S.G., Papst, W. and Hoffmann, A.A. (2007) Local adaptation and cogradient selection in the alpine plant, Poa hiemata, along a narrow altitudinal gradient. Evolution 61, 2925–2941.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, C.A. (1989) Primate seed dispersal – the fate of dispersed seeds. Biotropica 21, 148–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clauss, M., Lang-Deuerling, S., Müller, D.W.H., Kienzle, E., Steuer, P. and Hummel, J. (2010) Retention of fluid and particles in captive tapirs (Tapirus sp.). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology – Part A: Molecular and Integrative Physiology 157, 95–101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Connell, J.H. (1971) On the role of natural enemies in preventing competitive exclusion in some marine animals and in rain forest trees. pp. 298–312 in Den Boer, P.J.; Gradwell, G. (Eds) Dynamics of populations. Wageningen, The Netherlands, PUDOC.Google Scholar
Cruz-Rodriguez, J. and Lopez-Mata, L. (2004) Demography of the seedling bank of Manilkara zapota (L.) Royen in a subtropical rain forest of Mexico. Plant Ecology 172, 227–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennis, A.J. and Westcott, D.A. (2006) Reducing complexity when studying seed dispersal at community scales: a functional classification of vertebrate seed dispersers in tropical forests. Oecologia 149, 620–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fragoso, J.M.V., Silvius, K.M. and Correa, J.A. (2003) Long-distance seed dispersal by tapirs increases seed survival and aggregates tropical trees. Ecology 84, 1998–2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, E. (1965) Distribución de la precipitación en la República Mexicana. Publicación del Instituto de Geografía, UNAM 1, 173–191.Google Scholar
García-Gil, G., Palacio, J.L. and Ortiz, M.A. (2002) Reconocimiento geomorfológico e hidrográfico de la Reserva de la Biosfera Calakmul, México. Investigaciones Geográficas. Boletín del Instituto de Geografía, UNAM 48, 7–23.Google Scholar
Grondahl, E. and Ehlers, B.K. (2008) Local adaptation to biotic factors: reciprocal transplants of four species associated with aromatic Thymus pulegioides and T. serpyllum. Journal of Ecology 96, 981–992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, D.M., Kaiser, C.N. and Müller, C.B. (2008) Seed dispersal and establishment of endangered plants on oceanic islands: the Janzen–Connell Model, and the use of ecological analogues. PLoS One 3, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyatt, L.A., Rosenberg, M.S., Howard, T.G., Bole, G., Fang, W., Anastasia, J., Brown, K., Grella, R., Hinman, K., Kurdziel, J.P. and Gurevitch, J. (2003) The distance dependence prediction of the Janzen–Connell hypothesis: a meta-analysis. Oikos 103, 590–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jansen, P.A., Bongers, F. and van der Meer, P.J. (2008) Is farther seed dispersal better? Spatial patterns of offspring mortality in three rainforest tree species with different dispersal abilities. Ecography 31, 43–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, D.H. (1970) Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. The American Naturalist 104, 501–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordano, P. and Schupp, E.W. (2000) Determinants of seed disperser effectiveness: the quantity component and patterns of seed rain from Prunus mahaleb. Ecological Monographs 70, 591–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordano, P., Garcia, C., Godoy, J.A. and Garcia-Castano, J.L. (2007) Differential contribution of frugivores to complex seed dispersal patterns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, 3278–3282.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joshi, J., Schmid, B., Caldeira, M.C., Dimitrakopoulos, P.G., Good, J., Harris, R., Hector, A., Huss-Danell, K., Jumpponen, A., Minns, A., Mulder, C.P.H., Pereira, J.S., Prinz, A., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Siamantziouras, A.S.D., Terry, A.C., Troumbis, A.Y. and Lawton, J.H. (2001) Local adaptation enhances performance of common plant species. Ecology Letters 4, 536–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levey, D.J., Tewksbury, J.J. and Bolker, B.M. (2008) Modelling long-distance seed dispersal in heterogeneous landscapes. Journal of Ecology 96, 599–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martínez, E. and Galindo-Leal, C. (2002) La vegetación de Calakmul, Campeche, México: clasificación, descripción y distribución. Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México 71, 7–32.Google Scholar
McConkey, K.R. and Chivers, D.J. (2007) Influence of gibbon ranging patterns on seed dispersal distance and deposition site in a Bornean forest. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23, 269–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McSweeney, C., New, M. and Lizcano, G. (2007) UNDP Climate change country profiles: Mexico.Available at http://country-profiles.geog.ox.ac.uk (accessed 6 July 2011).Google Scholar
Morton, J. (1987) Sapodilla. pp. 393–398 in Morton, J.F. (Ed.) Fruits of warm climates. Winterville, North Carolina, Creative Resource Systems, Inc.Google Scholar
Muller-Landau, H.C., Levin, S.A. and Keymer, J.E. (2003) Theoretical perspectives on evolution of long-distance dispersal and the example of specialized pests. Ecology 84, 1957–1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, R. (2006) Long-distance dispersal of plants. Science 313, 786–788.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nathan, R. and Casagrandi, R. (2004) A simple mechanistic model of seed dispersal, predation and plant establishment: Janzen–Connell and beyond. Journal of Ecology 92, 733–746.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, R. and Muller-Landau, H.C. (2000) Spatial patterns of seed dispersal, their determinants and consequences for recruitment. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 15, 278–285.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Farrill, G., Calmé, S. and Gonzalez, A. (2006) Manilkara zapota: A new record of a species dispersed by tapirs. Tapir Conservation 15, 32–35.Google Scholar
Pennington, T.D. (1990) Flora Neotropicana. New York, The New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team (2005) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Available at http://www.R-project.org (accessed 6 July 2011).Google Scholar
Roldan, A.I. and Simonetti, J.A. (2001) Plant–mammal interactions in tropical Bolivian forests with different hunting pressures. Conservation Biology 15, 617–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schupp, E.W. (1993) Quantity, quality and the effectiveness of seed dispersal by animals. Vegetatio 107/108, 223–230.Google Scholar
Terborgh, J.N., Pitman, M., Silman, H., Schichter, P. and Nunez, V. (2002) Maintenance of tree diversity in tropical forests. pp. 1–18 in Levey, D.; Silva, W.; Galetti, M. (Eds) Seed dispersal and frugivory: ecology, evolution and conservation. Wallingford, CABI Publishing.Google Scholar
Tobler, M.W. (2008) The ecology of the lowland tapir in Madre de Dios, Peru: using new technologies to study large rainforest mammals.PhD thesis, Texas A&M University.Google Scholar
Turner, B.L., Villar, S.C., Foster, D., Geoghegan, J., Keys, E., Klepeis, P., Lawrence, D., Mendoza, P.M., Manson, S., Ogneva-Himmelberger, Y., Plotkin, A.B., Salicrup, D.P., Chowdhury, R.R., Savitsky, B., Schneider, L., Schmook, B. and Vance, C. (2001) Deforestation in the southern Yucatan peninsular region: an integrative approach. Forest Ecology and Management 154, 353–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vester, H.F.M., Lawrence, D., Eastman, J.R., Turner, B.L., Calmé, S., Dickson, R., Pozo, C. and Sangermano, F. (2007) Land change in the Southern Yucatan and Calakmul Biosphere Reserve: Effects on habitat and biodiversity. Ecological Appications 17, 989–1003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weterings, M.J.A., Weterings-Schonck, S.M., Vester, H.F.M. and Calmé, S. (2008) Senescent Manilkara zapota communities in Mexico: consequences for large bird species in aged forest units. Forest Ecology and Management 256, 1604–1611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, D.A. and Hood, C.S. (2004) Vegetation patterns and environmental gradients in tropical dry forests of the northern Yucatan Peninsula. Journal of Vegetation Science 15, 151–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xuluc-Tolosa, F.J., Vester, H.F.M., Ramirez-Marcial, N., Castellanos-Albores, J. and Lawrence, D. (2003) Leaf litter decomposition of tree species in three successional phases of tropical dry secondary forest in Campeche, Mexico. Forest Ecology and Management 174, 401–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeiter, M. and Stampfli, A. (2008) Long-term assessment of seed provenance effect on the establishment of the perennial grass Bromus erectus. Journal of Vegetation Science 19, 821–830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar