Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, U.S.A.
Department of Biology, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 18766, U.S.A.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2017 Feb;92(1):474-504. doi: 10.1111/brv.12240. Epub 2015 Nov 20.
A mechanistic understanding of seed movement and survival is important both for the development of theoretical models of plant population dynamics, spatial spread, and community assembly, and for the conservation and management of plant communities under global change. While models of wind-borne seed dispersal have advanced rapidly over the past two decades, models for animal-mediated dispersal have failed to make similar progress due to their dependence on interspecific interactions and complex, context-dependent behaviours. In this review, we synthesize the literature on seed dispersal and consumption by scatter-hoarding, granivorous rodents and outline a strategy for development of a general mechanistic seed-fate model in these systems. Our review decomposes seed dispersal and survival into six distinct sub-processes (exposure, harvest, allocation, preparation, placement, and recovery), and identifies nine intermediate (latent) variables that link physical state variables (e.g. seed and animal traits, habitat structure) to decisions regarding seed allocation to hoarding or consumption, cache placement and management, and deployment of radicle-pruning or embryo excision behaviours. We also highlight specific areas where research on these intermediate relationships is needed to improve our mechanistic understanding of scatter-hoarder behaviour. Finally, we outline a strategy to combine detailed studies on individual functional relationships with seed-tracking experiments in an iterative, hierarchical Bayesian framework to construct, refine, and test mechanistic models for context-dependent, scatter-hoarder-mediated seed fate.
对种子传播和存活机制的理解，对于发展植物种群动态、空间扩散和群落组装的理论模型，以及在全球变化下保护和管理植物群落，都非常重要。虽然过去二十年中，风传播种子扩散模型取得了快速进展，但由于动物介导的种子扩散模型依赖于种间相互作用和复杂、依赖于情境的行为，因此未能取得类似的进展。在这篇综述中，我们综合了关于散布贮藏、食谷啮齿动物传播和消耗种子的文献，并概述了在这些系统中开发一般机制种子命运模型的策略。我们的综述将种子传播和存活分解为六个不同的子过程（暴露、收获、分配、准备、放置和恢复），并确定了九个中间（潜在）变量，这些变量将物理状态变量（例如种子和动物特征、栖息地结构）与关于将种子分配给贮藏或消耗、储存位置和管理以及部署根修剪或胚胎切除行为的决策联系起来。我们还强调了在这些中间关系研究方面需要研究的具体领域，以提高我们对散布贮藏行为的机制理解。最后，我们概述了一种策略，即将个体功能关系的详细研究与种子追踪实验结合起来，以迭代、分层贝叶斯框架构建、改进和测试依赖情境、由散布贮藏者介导的种子命运的机制模型。
