Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Epilobium hirsutum seed head dispersing seeds. In spermatophyte plants, seed dispersal is the movement, spread or transport of seeds away from the parent plant. [1] Plants have limited mobility and rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their seeds, including both abiotic vectors, such as the wind, and living vectors such as birds.
Dandelion seeds are adapted to wind dispersal. A dispersal vector is an agent of biological dispersal that moves a dispersal unit, or organism, away from its birth population to another location or population in which the individual will reproduce. [1] [2] These dispersal units can range from pollen to seeds to fungi to entire organisms.
Seeds have evolved traits to reward animals to enhance their dispersal abilities. [5] Differing foraging behaviours of animals can lead to selection of dispersal traits and spatial variation [3] [8] such as increase in seed size for mammal dispersal, which can limit seed production. [9]
Dispersal is also used to describe the movement of propagules such as seeds and spores. Technically, dispersal is defined as any movement that has the potential to lead to gene flow. [1] The act of dispersal involves three phases: departure, transfer, and settlement. There are different fitness costs and benefits associated with each of these ...
Longer dispersal distances and potentially larger ecological consequences follow from sequential endochory by two different animals, i.e. diploendozoochory: a primary disperser that initially consumes the seed, and a secondary, carnivorous animal that kills and eats the primary consumer along with the seeds in the prey's digestive tract, and ...
Burs serve the plants that bear them in two main ways. Firstly, burs are spinescent and tend to repel some herbivores, much as other spines and prickles do. [3] Secondly, plants with burs rely largely on living agents to disperse their seeds; their burs are mechanisms of seed dispersal by epizoochory (dispersal by attaching to the outside of ...
This type of seed dispersal is termed myrmecochory from the Greek "ant" (myrmex) and "circular dance" (khoreíā). This type of symbiotic relationship appears to be mutualistic , more specifically dispersive mutualism according to Ricklefs, R.E. (2001), as the plant benefits because its seeds are dispersed to favorable germination sites, and ...
Ants disperse seeds in fairly predictable ways, either by disposing of them in underground middens or by ejecting them from the nest. [2] These patterns of ant dispersal are predictable enough to permit plants to manipulate animal behaviour and influence seed fate, [13] effectively directing the dispersal of seeds to desirable sites. For ...