| Popis: |
We used a computer simulation to quantify how intra-crop variation in wing-loading in a wind-dispersed species affects the seed distribution around a parent plant. We used a data set of seed distributions generated from a previous field study using artificial fruits varying in seed mass or fruit area dispersed from a tower into a tropical forest. For this study, the spatial distribution from each hypothetical parent’s fruit crop of 1000 was calculated by randomly drawing locations of dispersed fruits from the previous data base. Three parents with contrasting fruit crops were used to test two hypotheses: 1) Increasing within-parent variance in wing-loading (= weight/area), while maintaining the mean, will lead to an increase in the area and uniformity of the seed distribution, without changing the mean dispersal distance. 2) Decreasing within-parent mean wing-loading, (which also decreases variance), will lead to an increase in mean dispersal distance, area, and uniformity of the seed distribution. The hypotheses were tested under four wind speeds. |
