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 66 deer regurgitate DHJanzen100830.jpg high resolution
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| However, while they do not swallow large seeds and chew up all kinds of seeds (making the deer a seed predator in many circumstances, rather than a seed disperser), they DO spit out large hard seeds or nuts. Deer often forage on the forest floor, and then bed down in an old pasture (it is apparently a safer place to sleep in a world of foraging mountain lions and jaguars). These seeds (of Enterolobium cyclocarpum) and nuts of Spondias purpurea (the red fruit) and Agonandra macrocarpa (the green fruit) were spit out in one regurgitation session by one deer far out into an abandoned ACG pasture. Since a deer may return to the same bed day after day, the result can be a very large number of tree seeds in one very small area. Since only one tree can grow in such a small area, this can be a very lethal kind of seed dispersal, though it can also result in tree saplings in places very far from forest far outside of the seed shadows generated by other seed dispersers. | ||
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