The importance of individual movement and feeding behaviour for long-distance seed dispersal by red deer: a data-driven model.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Long-distance seed dispersal (LDD) has strong impacts on the spatiotemporal dynamics of plants. Large animals are important LDD vectors because they regularly transport seeds of many plant species over long distances. While there is now ample evidence that behaviour varies considerably between individual animals, it is not clear to what extent inter-individual variation in behaviour alters seed dispersal by animals.

Methods

We study how inter-individual variation in the movement and feeding behaviour of one of Europe's largest herbivores (the red deer, Cervus elaphus) affects internal seed dispersal (endozoochory) of multiple plant species. We combine movement data of 21 individual deer with measurements of seed loads in the dung of the same individuals and

SUBMITTER: Wright SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7594291 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature