Small Carnivores Play Important Role in Helping Fruiting Plants to Reproduce and Disperse their Seeds.

It is a known fact that many small carnivores eat fruits as supplements. It was assumed that it was purely an incidental happening and does not have much ecological significance. This is set to change now.

Scientists from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) have shown that carnivorous animals such as foxes and martens play an important role in helping fruiting plants to reproduce and disperse their seeds.

The researchers studied how foxes and (Vulpes vulpes) and the European pine marten (Martes martes) consumed the fruit of the rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) in the Cordillera Cantábrica mountain range. They found that that both species were capable of tracking yearly differences in the abundance of rowan fruit in Cantabrian forests and plumbed for the most productive trees. The Carnivores were helping to disperse the seeds. The carnivores consumed considerable proportion of the fallen fruit and this was much more than the amount destroyed by rodents during the same period.

The Rowan is a pioneer species that colonizes secondary scrub and "prepares the way for further succession.

According to the researchers, the rowan-fox-marten system could be important in mountain ecosystems on the Iberian Peninsula.

Full details appear in the latest issue of journal Acta Oecologica