Biology Beech nuts carried away by animals do not germinate
Beech seeds carried by animals do not germinate. The trees therefore do not benefit from wood mice and dormice spreading their seeds in the forest, as Viennese biologists have shown in a study.
22.01.2025, 08:26
SDA
They found hundreds of beech nuts dispersed by the rodents in a forest in Lower Austria. Not a single one of them was able to germinate, they report in the Royal Society's journal "Biology Letters". A team led by Frederik Sachser from the Federal Research Center for Forests in Vienna spent four years placing trays of beech nuts in the Rothwald forest, which were marked with flags or radio transmitters.
Camera traps revealed to the researchers who was visiting the bowls: various wood mice, bank voles and dormice. Some of them ate the nuts immediately. However, the animals carried off between 20 and 70 percent of them to hoard them in a hiding place.
The researchers were able to recover 536 marked beech nuts during their weekly searches. "Not a single seed that was not in place germinated," they wrote in the article. This only happened with those nuts that were not transported by the rodents. The relationship between rodents and beeches is therefore not characterized by mutual benefit, as was previously believed.
The animals therefore feast on the fruit of the trees without receiving anything in return.
