legumes, the Stinking Toe Tree (Hymenaea courbaril)
produces 12.5 cm (5 in) oval pods with five large
seeds inside. The pods drop whole to the forest floor
and often provide food for agoutis and other forest
mammals as well as various weevils.
Fruit “advertises” itself to potential seed dispersers.
The equitable tropical climate allows for some fruiting
to occur every month of the year, at least in moist
forests. Much more will be said of the relationships
between fruits and their seed dispersers in chapter 10.
What follows here is a sampler.
The wide variety of fruit types is indicative of extensive
consumption by animals and subsequent dispersal of
seeds. But fruit consumers do not always disperse seeds
and in fact often consume them. Among the mammals,
monkeys, bats, various rodents, peccaries, and tapirs
are common consumers of fruits and seeds, oftentimes
dispersing the seeds, sometimes destroying them.
Agoutis, which are rodents, skillfully use their sharp
incisors to gnaw away the tough, protective seed coat
on the Brazil nut, thus enabling the animal to eat the
seed contained within. Some extinct mammals, such as
the giant ground sloths and elephantine gomphotheres,
may have been important in dispersing large seeds of
various tropical plants. Birds such as tinamous, guans,
curassows, doves and pigeons, trogons, toucans, and
parrots are also attracted to large fruits and the seeds
within them. Along flooded forests, some fish species are
important fruit consumers and seed dispersers. Animals
consume small fruits and seeds as readily as larger ones.
Insects especially are frequent predators of small seeds.
Some trees have wind- dispersed seeds, and thus
the fruits are usually not consumed by animals. The
seeds of Ceiba pentandra are dispersed by parachute-
like, silky fibers called kapok, which give the tree both
of its common names, Kapok and Silk- cotton Tree.Plates 3- 28 and 3- 29. These two photos show examples of fruits that depend on animals to disperse their seeds. The bright colors
of the fruits advertise them to potential seed dispersers. Photos by John Kricher.
Plates 3- 30 and 3- 31. This large, 18 cm (7 in) long seedpod is not from a tree but from a woody vine, or liana, of the Bignoniaceae
family. Plate 3- 30 shows the closed pod, 3- 31 the seeds contained within the pod. Photos by John Kricher.
48 chapter 3 rain forest: the realm of the plants