Seed dispersal via ingestion by vertebrate animals (mostly birds and mammals), or endozoochory, is the dispersal mechanism for most tree species. The North American (Phoradendron) and Australian mistletoes (Ameyema) are dispersed by various birds, and the comparable tropical species of the plant family Loranthaceae by flowerpeckers (of the bird family Dicaeidae), which have a highly specialized gizzard that allows seeds to pass through but retains insects. Plan your 60-minute lesson in Science or plants with helpful tips from Melissa Collins Lesson 2.1: How Wind, Water, and Animals Disperse Seeds About the Books Wonder Statement: I wonder how wind, water, and animals help some seeds move to new places. Some are eaten; others are forgotten. Plants that depend on animals for dispersal have seeds that are adapted to traveling on the outside or the inside of the animal. Animals of all sorts and sizes help plants to disperse their seeds. The seed itself can also become an attractive food item for an animal that likes to cash food for the winter (Ex: squirrels and acorns). This leaderboard is disabled as your options are different to the resource owner. Most myrmecochorous plants (species of violet, primrose, hepatica, cyclamen, anemone, corydalis, Trillium, and bloodroot) belong to the herbaceous spring flora of northern forests. This leaderboard has been disabled by the resource owner. The so-called ant epiphytes of the tropics (i.e., species of Hoya, Dischidia, Aeschynanthus, and Myrmecodia—plants that live in “ant gardens” on trees or offer the ants shelter in their own body cavities) constitute a special group of myrmecochores that provide oil in seed hairs. Epizoochory is externally transporting the seeds. Secondarily, rodents may aid in dispersal by stealing the embedded diaspores and burying them. Cultivated apple trees are propagated asexually via grafting. Examples are rose hips, plums, dogwood fruits, barberry, red currant, mulberry, nutmeg fruits, figs, blackberries, and others. Other ants (Lasius, Myrmica, and Formica species) eat the fleshy, edible appendage (the fat body or elaiosome) of certain specialized seeds, which they disperse. Many plants produce fruits or individual seeds covered in hooks or spines which attach the seed to the animals's fur or feathers - or, in the case of humans, to our clothes or bags. Seeds with burrs or hooks can attach to an animal’s fur. Earthworms are more important as seed dispersers. Even humans carry seeds far away for plants - by taking an apple on a picnic, for example, and throwing the core, with its seeds, into the bushes. The method they use depends on the type of seed. The natural and abundant occurrence of Euonymus, which is a largely tropical genus, in temperate Europe and Asia, can be understood only in connection with the activities of birds. Most ornithochores (plants with bird-dispersed seeds) have conspicuous diaspores attractive to such fruit-eating birds as thrushes, pigeons, barbets (members of the bird family Capitonidae), toucans, and hornbills (family Bucerotidae), all of which either excrete or regurgitate the hard embryo-containing part undamaged. Stop and discuss the section on seed dispersal and keep a running track of other animals seen throughout the video. #seeds #science #teaching I wrote this one for my elementary science classes to help them learn about seeds and seed dispersal. Animal Dispersal. The method they use depends on the type of seed. Some plants have juicy fruit that animals like to eat. Birds can spread the seeds of raspberries and grapes or poison ivy and bittersweet, they don’t discriminate. Blackberry, cherry and apple seeds are dispersed in this way. Bus this happens when they prey on eared doves. In water burrs, such as those of the water nut Trapa, the spines should probably be considered as anchoring devices. Their functional shape is achieved in various ways—in cleavers, or bedstraw (Galium aparine), and enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana), the hooks are part of the fruit itself; in common agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria), the fruit is covered by a persistent calyx (the sepals, parts of the flower, which remain attached beyond the usual period) equipped with hooks; in wood avens (Geum urbanum), the persistent styles have hooked tips. Snails disperse the small seeds of a very few plant species (e.g., Adoxa). Mimicry—the protection-affording imitation of a dangerous or toxic species by an edible, harmless one—is shown in reverse by certain bird-dispersed “coral seeds” such as those of many species in the genera Abrus, Ormosia, Rhynchosia, Adenanthera, and Erythrina. The small hooks on the surface of abur enable attachment to animal fur for dispersion.Animals can disperse plant seeds in several ways, all named zoochory. In the tropics, chiropterochory (dispersal by large bats such as flying foxes, Pteropus) is particularly important. For instance, some animals disperse the plant seeds, while others transfer pollen from one flower to another. Furry terrestrial mammals are the agents most frequently involved in epizoochory, the inadvertent carrying by animals of dispersal units. Many intact fruits and seeds can serve as fish bait, those of Sonneratia, for example, for the catfish Arius maculatus. In South Africa, a desert melon (Cucumis humifructus) participates in a symbiotic relationship with aardvarks—the animals eat the fruit for its water content and bury their own dung, which contains the seeds, near their burrows. Any seed the animal forgets has the opportunity to germinate into a new plant. 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