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Seed traits we are interested in #2

Open wangxm-forest opened 5 months ago

wangxm-forest commented 5 months ago

Monoecious vs. Dioecious Temperate vs. Tropical Seed dispersal or seed drop time Life span and age at reproduction Seed dormancy Seed size Seed longevity/lifespan of seed Determinacy (Determinate vs. Indeterminate) Dispersal modes

wangxm-forest commented 5 months ago

@selenashew Here's the traits we are interested in, if you could think of any data sources you've been working with might have these types of data, please let me know. Thank you!

lizzieinvancouver commented 5 months ago

Determinacy (Determinate vs. Indeterminate)

Ask Fredi!

Seed dormancy

We can use the baskin dataset which is in EGRET for this.

Seed size

Kew seed size dataset.

Temperate vs. Tropical

The Zanne 2014 paper

Monoecious vs. Dioecious

Check out watson and dallwitz

We should add ... Animal or wind pollinated, and I have a lot of this coded. I gave it to Dan B. once so ask him if he remember where it is, otherwise I will track it down again.

Check out the Mabberly book for (in my office, Natasha can let you in) for likely (you have to figure out the coding in the book):

wangxm-forest commented 5 months ago

@lizzieinvancouver I had a really great discussion with Rob yesterday. I asked for his opinions on the traits we listed and if there were any other traits he could think of that might be related to masting.

Following are some interesting points we discussed:

  1. Monoecious vs. dioecious: monoecious species might be better at making sure that pollen and ovules coordinate. For dioecious species, whether they coordinate will be an important factor in determining if there will be a masting event.
  2. More pollen doesn't necessarily guarantee a mast year. Rob mentioned that there are data on annual pollen amounts available online. With a quick search, I couldn't find data on specific species only. If this kind of data is available, it would be interesting to look at.
  3. Determinacy: Wind-dispersed species are usually determinate, and for animal-dispersed species, being determinate is related to keeping seeds longer, which means having bigger seeds. As a result, species that mast are more likely to be determinate.
  4. We also considered the predator satiation hypothesis from another perspective: the interaction between different seed predators. Some seeds need to be processed by the gut of a seed predator before they can germinate, and some seeds need to be buried by the seed disperser. When two species compete for seeds, but only one species can efficiently disperse them (for example, hazelnuts can have lots of empty nuts before they even mature because of insects, but only squirrels can help hazelnuts disperse their seeds successfully).
  5. We also talked about the oak woodpecker! We both didn't know much about the fate of those acorns mounted to the tree that don't end up being eaten by the birds, but it might be interesting to explore this further.
lizzieinvancouver commented 5 months ago

a really great discussion with Rob yesterday. I asked for his opinions on the traits we listed and if there were any other traits he could think of that might be related to masting.

Super cool info! I don't fully understand the outcome of 4, perhaps we can discuss more on the drive to MORA.