Background:

High post-dispersal fruit-seed removal can be a bottleneck for successful propagation to new areas of plant populations with fragmented distribution, as in cloud forest. Therefore, it is important to know how vegetation and fruit-eating behavior will influence the spatial removal pattern.

Questions and/or Hypotheses:

How do vegetation structure and density influence fruit removal of Persea hintonii in potential propagation areas?

Study site and dates:

Las Joyas Scientific Station, Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, Jalisco, Mexico. April-May 2015.

Methods:

The number of fruits removed were recorded in treatments excluding of different size vertebrates, in areas with a dense or sparse understory within two forest types plus open areas with shrub cover. To identify vertebrate fruit-removing species, camera-traps were placed under the canopy of P. hintonii trees with high fructification amounts.

Results:

Fruit removal was lower in areas of low understory density at pine-oak forests (11.17 ± 5.30 %) and gap areas (25.5 ± 2.39 %), compared to subtropical cloud forests (72.51 ± 0.60 %). The number of days to start the fruit removal was lower in the cloud and pine-oak forests with dense understory than in those with a sparse understory. We identified six mammal and three bird species as removers of P. hintonii fruits, among which Pecari tajacu and small mammals were the most important fruit removers.

Conclusions:

Low density understory in pine-oak favor less fruit removal of P. hintonii, probably associated with the behavior of its consumers.

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