Late-Season Boreal Toad Tadpoles

Abstract

filled. I found no significant difference between pits excreted by starlings and pits extracted from intact fruit in the proportions of pits in the 3 categories (Fig. 1; x2 = 2.84, df = 2, P > 0.05). The following winter (1995-96), I gathered an additional 303 pits excreted by a flock of >500 starlings that I observed feeding and defecating upon a bluegrass pasture. Of these seeds, 278 (91.7%) were entirely filled with endosperm. On 14 January 1995, I collected 115 pits excreted by starlings in irrigated pasture and 143 fruits from an adjacent stand of trees. On 1 April, I planted each group separately in 2 containers filled with silty loam soil, which was kept moist and exposed to direct sunlight from a southern-exposure window. Germination in both samples was first noted on 8 May. On 10 May, when sprouts were just breaking the soil surface, I dug up all seeds and sprouts from both containers and determined the number of pits that had germinated. There was no significant difference (X2 = 0.023, df = 1, P > 0.05) in germination rate of pits excreted by starlings (10.4%) and those extracted from intact fruit (9.8%). My results show that Russian-olive pits suffer no significant loss in viability as they pass through digestive tracts of starlings. Thus, starlings appear to be effective dispersers of Russian-olive seed, and they may have contributed significantly to the spread of this introduced species.