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11 November 2013 Reconciling natural history and species ecology: Myristica beddomei (Myristicaceae) in the Western Ghats, India
Abstract

Natural history is an important component of any ecological or conservation research. Very often this is not given adequate attention, and observations on the genera or species are often generalized to other, supposedly similar, congeneric species. In this study, we document the natural history of fruit-frugivore interactions of Myristica beddomei (Myristicaceae) found in the mid-elevation evergreen forests of the Western Ghats, India, and determine how different these interactions are compared to other Myristicaceae species. M. beddomei has a single hard seed covered by an orange-yellow aril. Species of Myristicaceae are usually dispersed by large frugivorous birds, and also by primates in the Neotropics. In South Asia, Myristicaceae dispersal is usually by large birds such as hornbills, but our observations over several years indicate that M. beddomei is not bird-dispersed, even though some fruit traits suggest bird dispersal. Our observations suggest that obligate seed predators like macaques and squirrels can facilitate dispersal of the species. We discuss these observations and explore why such outliers might have evolved in the region

© 2013 Chetana, H.C. and Ganesh, T. This is an open access paper. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ - The license permits any user to download, print out, extract, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and source of the work. The license ensures that the published article will be as widely available as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive. Open Access authors retain the copyrights of their papers. Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.
"Reconciling natural history and species ecology: Myristica beddomei (Myristicaceae) in the Western Ghats, India," Tropical Conservation Science 6(5), 663-673, (11 November 2013). https://doi.org/10.1177/194008291300600506
Received: 5 June 2013; Accepted: 11 July 2013; Published: 11 November 2013
KEYWORDS
dormouse
frugivore
KMTR
Myristica beddomei
seed predation
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