Vertebrate-dispersed plants: why they don’t behave the way they should

摘要: Recent field studies of the interaction between vertebrate-dispersed plants and their seed vectors have often revealed patterns departing significantly from those predicted by earlier coevolutionary approaches. It is argued here that two families assumptions implicit in these approaches account, case at least, for frequent predictive failure. These are (1) a plant its vertebrate dispersal agents takes place world where they virtually only inhabitants; (2) attributes relevant to process effectively undergo measurable evolutionary change within reasonable time frame response changing ecological conditions. shown sets not generally supported available evidence.