Animals
run & cry when attacked by predators. But plants have adapted to appeal to
animals and birds that spread their seeds.
Over
millions of years, these plants have developed ways to communicate with animals
through fruits, new research suggests, saying something like “choose me.” With
traits evolved to match each animal’s sensory capacities or physical abilities,
fruits can signal dinner time, and further their plant’s survival as a species.
Red
berries and orange figs hang in the rain forest’s canopy. They are waiting for
monkeys, apes or birds to scan the foliage, eat the ripe fruit and either spit
or defecate seeds far from their sources, spreading their next generation to a
new location.
In the
similarly mountainous rain forests of Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park,
yellow berries or fragrant, green figs await lemurs. They will search the
forest all night for their feast, later scattering the seeds.
Kim
Valenta, an evolutionary ecologist at Duke University and her colleagu…
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