Welcome to Chinese Journal of Ecology! Today is Share:

cje ›› 2005, Vol. ›› Issue (6): 635-638.

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Fruits foraging patterns and seed dispersal effect of frugivorous birds on Hippophae rhamnoides sinensis

LU Xianwen, SUN Kun, MA Ruijun, ZHANG Hui, SU Xue, WANG Mingli   

  1. College of Life Sciences, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • Received:2004-09-22 Revised:2004-11-10 Online:2005-06-10

Abstract: Behaviors of 18 species of birds eating fruits of Hippophae rhamnoides sinensis were observed from September 2003 to March 2004.Their frugivorous ways were found to be various: 1)directly swallowing the fruits on the crown of the shrubs and sometimes regurgitating seeds soon after;2)carrying the fruits to their perching sites and swallowing;3)pecking the fruits from the shrubs to the ground,eating pulp and seeds but leaving pericarp;4)pecking through the pericarp,eating pulp and leaving pericarp and seeds;5)pecking through the pericarp on the top of fruits,and only eating seeds.These ways have different effects on seed dispersing of H.rhamnoides sinensis.The germination experiment of three groups of seeds (seeds from feces,dry fruits and extracted seeds from dry fruits) was compared.Although ingestion process of birds had some effects on seed germination of H.rhamnoides sinensis,the seeds from feces still had a relative higher germination ratio.H.rhamnoides sinensis provides food to a variety of frugivorous birds,and the birds disperse its seeds.Thus,mutually beneficial relationship between them was formed.

Key words: Fire, Productivity restoration, Forest coverage, Factor analysis, Kendall correlation analysis

CLC Number: