Abstract
Photo 1: Flowering P. bourgaeana trees (upper left), fruiting pear tree (upper right), aborted fruit (lower left), and one aborted and several ripe developed fruits (lower right). Photo credit: Miguel Delibes (upper left), Jose M. Fedriani (all other panels). Photo 2: Some of the rodent species involved in our study concerning P. bourgaeana seed predation and dispersal by rodents; Algerian mouse Mus spretus (upper left), garden dormouse Eliomys quercinus (upper right), wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus, and Algerian mouse (lower panels). Photo credit: Jose M. Fedriani. Photo 3: Dry aborted fruits (upper line) and fleshy developed fruits (lower line; upper left panel). Dry aborted fruit gnawed by rodents (upper right), and fleshy ripe fruit likely eaten by rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus (lower left). Fleshy green fruits partially eaten by deer Cervus elaphus when still attached to the tree (lower right). Photo credit: Gemma Calvo. Photo 4: Field experiments to investigate rodent foraging on P. bourgaeana fruits. The “tables” allowed us to prevent fruit consumption by other frugivores such as rabbits, carnivores and ungulates. Photo credit: Gemma Calvo. Photo 5: Other mammals that feed on ripe P. bourgaeana fruits but not aborted ones. Red deer C. elaphus (upper left), wild boar Sus scrofa (upper right), Eurasian badger Meles meles (lower left), and red fox Vulpes vulpes (lower right). Photo credit: Pedro J. Garrote. These photographs illustrate the article “The overlooked benefits of synzoochory: rodents rescue seeds from aborted fruits” by Jose M. Fedriani, Gemma Calvo, Miguel Delibes, Daniel Ayllón, and Pedro J. Garrote published in Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3298.
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