Fruits available to birds
In the Atlantic Forest study, fruits had watery pulp containing numerous small seeds. Observations of fruiting plants were combined with bird-feeding trials and tests of seeds recovered from droppings. Manually depulped seeds served as controls, allowing gut passage to be compared with pulp removal alone. This design separates the physiological effect of digestion from the eventual destination of the seed [Guaraldo et al. 2013].
Why disperser identity matters
Following Euphonia passage, about 52% of seeds germinated on average, compared with about 17% in the control. After passage through the tested Turdus thrushes, the value was about 4%. These data come from a 30-day trial at 25 °C. The difference shows that birds consuming the same fruit can affect seeds differently. It does not mean that one laboratory parameter completely describes a bird’s contribution in the forest [Guaraldo et al. 2013].
Effective dispersal also includes reaching a support, attachment and seedling survival. Observed Euphonia deposited mucilaginous seeds on perches, indicating a mechanism suited to an epiphyte. Combining favourable germination with that behaviour is biologically consequential, but the number of established young plants requires separate field measurement. The account therefore distinguishes the documented experiment from the complete cycle of population recruitment [Guaraldo et al. 2013].
Related articles
Materials from the author's archive
The species also appears in Konrad Szychowski's private material archive [Schumann 1890].
Synonyms and names in the literature
Hariota pachyptera · Cereus platycarpus · Hariota platycarpa · Hariota robusta · Hariota triquetra · Lepismium fluminense · Rhipsalis dusenii · Rhipsalis fluminensis · Rhipsalis pachyptera f. rubra · Rhipsalis platycarpa · Rhipsalis robusta [2-WWW]
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