Conditions favouring hard seededness as a dispersal and predator escape strategy.

ABSTRACT:

Summery

The water-impermeable seed coat of 'hard' seeds is commonly considered a dormancy trait. Seed smell is, however, strongly correlated with seed water content, and hard seeds are therefore olfactionally cryptic to foraging rodents. This is the rationale for the crypsis hypothesis, which proposes that the primary functions of hard seeds are to reduce seed predation and promote rodent seed dispersal. We use a mechanistic model to describe seed survival success of plants with different dimorphic soft and hard seed strategies. The model is based on established empirical-ecological relationships of moisture requirements for germination and benefits of seed dispersal, and on experimentally demonstrated relationships between seed volatile emission, predation and predator escape. We

SUBMITTER: Paulsen TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4277852 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature