Shows a picture of durian fruit, which draws a few laughs and memories. Wallace: “to eat a Durian is a new sensation worth a visit to the East”. Durian is trying to attract dispersers such as elephants.
Seed dispersal efficiency is a product go quality, quality, diversity of seeds and seed size.
In the Anthropocene there has been a downgrading of body rise (Hansen and Galetti 2009). Being a megafaunal syndrome plant is risky.
Tropical asian megafauna include elephants, rhinos, bovids and tapirs. Shows massive declines in range (from Mahmood et al in prep). Forest elephants have lost 95.1% of range, Indian rhinos 99.8%, Javan rhinos 100%, Sumatran rhinos 99.9%, Malaysan tapirs 98.0%. All monogastric megaherbivores have lost >95% of historical ranges!
Are there megafaunal specialisations in Asia? Yes. Lots of evidence from Africa. He has compiled a database of plant traits using Guimaraes et al (2008) criteria. How are megafaunal plants doing? We have no baseline data. Only in Singapore. 50% of megafaunal plants in the forest are critically endangered. Campos-Arceiz and Blake had a paper on elephants as dispersers of seeds.
Human-mediated changes in behaviour. Elephants seek human-made gaps such as roads because food is more available (more grasslands). Elephants near the road eat many more grasses and smaller home ranges.
Very large intact seeds of Borassus are much more common in male dung than female. Males (they are larger) are more important for seed dispersal but also more vulnerable to hunting (they only have tusks) and more likely to experience human-wildlife conflict
Rhinos are too endangered to be studied - the research would attract too much attention
Tapirs and sun bears can do medium sized seedsand have some functional overlap with megafauna. Rodents remove a substantial proportion of seeds in traps. What happens to them?
Conclusions: tropical Asia has a rich megafaunal community but this is rapidly declining and “we are moving to a Neotropicalization of the region”. Many tropical Asian plants show adaptations to megafaunal dispersal. Some but not a lot of functional redundancy with smaller dispersers.
Question: do elephants belong in Borneo. Reply: There is SE Asia islands are an oddity, they have only been islands for only a small fraction of the last few million years. There are plenty of megafaunal plants in Borneo. The question is not ecologically relevant.
“The urgent things don’t let us see the important things. In conservation we are always fighting fires With the pressure of loss from deforestation donors are not so interested by seed dispersal, which would take centuries for the consequences to play out”
Seed dispersal efficiency is a product go quality, quality, diversity of seeds and seed size.
In the Anthropocene there has been a downgrading of body rise (Hansen and Galetti 2009). Being a megafaunal syndrome plant is risky.
Tropical asian megafauna include elephants, rhinos, bovids and tapirs. Shows massive declines in range (from Mahmood et al in prep). Forest elephants have lost 95.1% of range, Indian rhinos 99.8%, Javan rhinos 100%, Sumatran rhinos 99.9%, Malaysan tapirs 98.0%. All monogastric megaherbivores have lost >95% of historical ranges!
Are there megafaunal specialisations in Asia? Yes. Lots of evidence from Africa. He has compiled a database of plant traits using Guimaraes et al (2008) criteria. How are megafaunal plants doing? We have no baseline data. Only in Singapore. 50% of megafaunal plants in the forest are critically endangered. Campos-Arceiz and Blake had a paper on elephants as dispersers of seeds.
Human-mediated changes in behaviour. Elephants seek human-made gaps such as roads because food is more available (more grasslands). Elephants near the road eat many more grasses and smaller home ranges.
Very large intact seeds of Borassus are much more common in male dung than female. Males (they are larger) are more important for seed dispersal but also more vulnerable to hunting (they only have tusks) and more likely to experience human-wildlife conflict
Rhinos are too endangered to be studied - the research would attract too much attention
Tapirs and sun bears can do medium sized seedsand have some functional overlap with megafauna. Rodents remove a substantial proportion of seeds in traps. What happens to them?
Conclusions: tropical Asia has a rich megafaunal community but this is rapidly declining and “we are moving to a Neotropicalization of the region”. Many tropical Asian plants show adaptations to megafaunal dispersal. Some but not a lot of functional redundancy with smaller dispersers.
Question: do elephants belong in Borneo. Reply: There is SE Asia islands are an oddity, they have only been islands for only a small fraction of the last few million years. There are plenty of megafaunal plants in Borneo. The question is not ecologically relevant.
“The urgent things don’t let us see the important things. In conservation we are always fighting fires With the pressure of loss from deforestation donors are not so interested by seed dispersal, which would take centuries for the consequences to play out”