Detecting animal dispersal of Fagacea trees with seedling transects along slopes.
英文要旨
Fagaceuos trees produce large seeds in large and irregular annual
fluctuation, predated by various animals. The seeds are supposed
to be dispersed by them. To detect animal dispersal of seeds,
we set about 850m and 250m long and 1m wide transects along the
slope in Central Japan. We recorded 67, 50 and 23 seedlings of
F. crenata, F. japonica and Q. crispula respectively in the transects.
Seedlings of the former two were mainly distributed around the
mature trees, and the last did also lower than the trees on the
slope. We need to elongate the transects to higher elevation and
try to record more in the next spring following all rich crop
of the three.
Key words: animal dipersal, seedling transect, slope, masting, Fagacea, plant-animal interaction