Scatter-hoarding rodents are important seed dispersers in pine plantations

Abstract

The caching behavior of rodents is widely considered to facilitate plant seed dispersal and seedling regeneration in forest ecosystems. Studies supporting this theory have been based mainly on experimental results from natural forests; however, whether scatter-hoarding rodents play an important role in seed dispersal and seedling regeneration in tree plantations remains unclear. In this study, we tracked 4000 seeds over 2 years in a Pinus armandii plantation in southwest China to investigate their fate from seed removal to survival after hoarding. We found that rodents removed more than 30.0% of the released seeds in both years, 9.9% to 29.1% of the seeds were scatter-hoarded under the leaf litter or on the soil surface, and a few seeds were removed two to three times. The dispersal distance of scatter-hoarded seeds ranged from 0.4 to 14.5 m with a mean of 3.55 m, and re-caching processes increased the dispersal distance of cached seeds. Additionally, 18.9% of the removed seeds survived in the cache until the end of the observation period. Our results suggested that scatter-hoarding rodents play an important role in seed dispersal in planted forests.