The importance of individual movement and feeding behaviour for long-distance seed dispersal by red deer: a data-driven
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RESEARCH
Open Access
The importance of individual movement and feeding behaviour for long-distance seed dispersal by red deer: a data-driven model Stephen J. Wright1,2* , Marco Heurich3,4, Carsten M. Buchmann1, Reinhard Böcker1 and Frank M. Schurr1
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 with data on gut passage time. These data serve to parameterize a model of passive dispersal that predicts LDD in three orientations (horizontal as well as upward and downward in elevation). With this model we investigate to what extent per-seed probabilities of LDD and seed load vary between individuals and throughout the vegetation period (May–December). Subsequently, we test whether per-seed LDD probability and seed load are positively (or negatively) correlated so that more mobile animals disperse more (or less) seeds. Finally, we examine whether non-random associations between per-seed LDD probability and seed load affect the LDD of individual plant species. Results: The studied deer dispersed viable seeds of at least 62 plant species. Deer individuals varied significantly in per-seed LDD probability and seed loads. However, more mobile animals did not disperse more or less seeds than less mobile ones. Plant species also did not differ significantly in the relationship between per-seed LDD probability and seed load. Yet plant species differed in how their seed load was distributed across deer individuals and in time, and this caused their LDD potential to differ more than twofold. For several plant species, we detected nonrandom associations between per-seed LDD probability and seed load that generally increased LDD potential. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Institute of Landscape and Plant Ecology, University of Hohenheim, 70599 Stuttgart, Germany 2 Frankfurt Zoological Society, Bernhard-Grzimek-Allee 1, 60316 Frankfurt, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if chang
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