Recruitment of fleshy-fruited species under different shrub species: Control by under-canopy environment

High species diversity in fleshy-fruited tropical understory plants.

Key innovations may increase the number of taxa in a clade that possesses the proposed innovation in comparison to its sister group that lacks the trait through either increased speciation or reduced extinction rates. Comparing sister clades across several independent lineages provides statistical support that the trait has increased species diversity. Previous studies have indicated that there...

Unpaved road verges as hotspots of fleshy-fruited shrub recruitment and establishment

Do Small Canopy Gaps Created by Japanese Black Bears Facilitate Fruiting of Fleshy-Fruited Plants?

Japanese black bears often break branches when climbing trees and feeding on fruit in canopies, thereby creating small canopy gaps. However, the role of black bear-created canopy gaps has not been evaluated in the context of multiple forest dynamics. Our hypothesis was that small canopy gaps created by black bears improve light conditions, which facilitates fruiting of adult fleshy-fruited plan...

Modeling seed dispersal in a variable environment: a case study of the fleshy-fruited savanna shrub Grewia flava

In ecology much attention has been paid towards seed dispersal of fleshy-fruited plants, however, knowledge is lacking about the long-term demographic consequences of variation in dispersal distance and fruit removal rate, particularly given the natural variability of the environment the organism lives in. In this study we used a spatially explicit, two-level stochastic computer model to simula...

Predation in two species of leech under laboratory conditions

Two 60 day experiments on predation behavior of leeches were conducted concurrently. In the first, medicinal leeches, Hirudo orientalis (Utevsky and Trontelj, 2005) were fed to satiation on bovine blood and subsequently transferred into two large opaque plastic containers of equal size but with differing temperatures, 6-7?C and 23-24?C, containing starved Erpobdella octoculata (L.). At the high...