| Abstrakt: |
The southeastern hinge-back tortoise, I Kinixys zombensis i Hewitt, 1931 (Figure 1a,b), is a sub-Saharan tortoise that may be an important fruit consumer and seed disperser in the coastal forests of eastern Africa. Based on species comparisons, I K. zombensis i may also play a more important role as a seed disperser in its coastal forest ecosystem than savannah-dwelling hinge-back tortoises where vertebrate seed dispersal is dominated by small (Kuechly et al., 2010) and large (Bunney et al., 2017) herbivorous mammals. Seed dispersal by chelonians (i.e. tortoises, turtles and terrapins) is geographically and taxonomically widespread, more so than any other reptilian groups (Falcón et al., 2020). We propose that future studies assess the seed dispersal effectiveness of hinge-back tortoises, like I K. zombensis i , using current frameworks for quantifying the number of seeds dispersed and the quality of seed germination (e.g. Schupp et al., 2010). [Extracted from the article] |
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