02.06 – Animal Poop & Seed Dispersal

Episode description:

Behold nature, red in tooth and bowel. There’s fierce competition in the green world for the amorous affections of their animal neighbors to pollinate their flowers. And on the heels of pollination comes an equally fierce battle where plants try to win a one way trip down a furry, scaly, or feathery beasts digestive tract. It’s plants, animals, and a big pile of poop. This is the Single Acorn Podscat.

WORKS CITED

• Woodland Message Board to contact us (link)
• Strawberries technically not a fruit (link)
• Tomato legally a fruit: Nix v Hedden (link)
• Yew can kill you (source)
• Success story: Taxol (uses in treating breast cancer) (source)
• What Do Cashews, Mangoes and Poison Ivy Have in Common? (article)
• Mortality rate among squirrels in winter
• Fruit flags: Two hypotheses (source)
• Ethylene gas: it’s not just for ripening any more! (source)
• Plants Can’t Talk. But Some Fruits Say ‘Eat Me’ to Animals (article)
• Lemurs and the Regeneration of Dry Deciduous Forest in Madagascar (source)
• Fish help to spread forest seeds (source)
• Duck faeces shed light on plant seed dispersal (source)
• Evidence for overlooked mechanisms of long-distance seed dispersal to and between oceanic islands (source)
• Hypercarnivorous apex predator could provide ecosystem services by dispersing seeds (source)
• Secondary Metabolite Emodin Increases Food Assimilation Efficiency of Yellow-Vented Bulbuls (Pycnonotus xanthopygos) (source)
• Mistletoe bird pooping (video)
• The anomalous Kentucky coffeetree: Megafaunal fruit sinking to extinction? (source)
• Effects of Artificial Roosts for Frugivorous Bats on Seed Dispersal in a Neotropical Forest Pasture Mosaic (source)
• What Happens When You Plant a Pile of Bear Scat? (article)