Frugivory and seed dispersal by chelonians: A review and synthesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In recent years, it has become clear that frugivory and seed dispersal (FSD) by turtles and tortoises is much more common than previously thought. Yet, a review and synthesis is lacking. We here review published and unpublished records of chelonian FSD, and assess the role of chelonians as seed dispersers, from individual species to the community level. We first discuss the distribution of chelonian FSD and the characteristics of the fruit and/or seed species eaten and dispersed by chelonians. We then use the seed dispersal efficiency framework to explore the quantitative and qualitative components of seed dispersal by tortoises and turtles, embarking on a journey from when the fruits and/or seeds are consumed, to when and where they are deposited, and assess how efficient chelonians are as seed dispersers. We finally discuss chelonian FSD in the context of communities and chelonians as megafauna. We found that a substantial proportion of the world’s aquatic and terrestrial turtles and a major part of testudinid tortoises (70 species in 12 families) include fruits and/or seeds in their diet, and that furits of at least 588 plant species in 120 families are ingested and/or dispersed by chelonians. For some chelonians, overall or in certain seasons, fruit may even form the largest part of their diet. Contrary to seed dispersal by lizards, the other major reptilian frugivores, chelonian FSD is not an island phenomenon in terms of geographic distribution. Nevertheless, on islands especially tortoises are often among the largest native terrestrial vertebrates—or were, until humans got there. We synthesize our knowledge of chelonian FSD, and discuss the relevance of our findings for conservation and restoration, especially in relation to rewilding with large and giant tortoises. Resumen En años recientes, se ha hecho claro que la frugivoría y dispersión de semillas (FDS) llevada a cabo por tortugas (quelónidos) es más común de lo antes pensado. No obstante, todavía carecíamos de una revisión y síntesis sobre este tema. En este artículo, revisamos récords (publicados y no publicados) sobre FDS por quelónidos, y evaluamos su rol como dispersores de semillas, desde el nivel de individuos, al nivel de comunidades. Primero, discutimos la distribución de FDS por quelónidos, y las características de las especies de frutos y/o semillas consumidas y dispersadas por tortugas. Luego hacemos uso del concepto de la eficiencia de dispersión de semillas como marco de referencia para explorar los componentes cualitativos y cuantitativos de la FDS por quelónidos, embarcándonos en un viaje desde cuando los frutos y/o semillas son consumidas, hasta cuando son depositadas. También evaluamos cuán eficientes son los quelónidos como dispersores de semillas. Finalmente procedemos a discutir la FDS por quelónidos en el contexto de comunidades, y como ‘megafauna’. Encontramos que una proporción substancial de las tortugas acuáticas del mundo y la mayor parte de las tortugas testudínidas (70 especies en 12 familias) incluyen frutos y/o semillas en su dieta que abarcan al menos 588 especies de plantas en 120 familias. En algunas especies, en general o en algunas estaciones, la mayor parte de su dieta está conformada por frutas y/o semillas. Más importante aún, y contrario a las lagartijas, que son otro grupo importante de reptiles que incurre en FDS, la frugivoría y dispersión de semillas por quelónidos no es un fenómeno de islas solamente, en términos de distribución geográfica. Empero, en islas, especialmente las tortugas terrestres, están entre los vertebrados nativos de mayor tamaño–o lo estuvieron, hasta que los humanos llegaron a ellas. En este artículo, hacemos una síntesis de las lecciones aprendidas hasta ahora sobre la FDS por quelónidos, y discutimos la relevancia de nuestros hallazgos para la conservación y restauración, especialmente en relación a proyectos de resilvestrar (‘rewilding’) con tortugas gigantes o de gran tamaño.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".