Decoding Darwin's puzzle: avian dispersal of mimetic seeds.

Keywords: bird memory; cheating; Fabaceae; frugivory; Rhynchosia; seed dispersal EN bird memory cheating Fabaceae frugivory Rhynchosia seed dispersal 1 4 4 06/04/20 20200601 NES 200601 One and a half century ago, Charles Darwin declared that the so-called mimetic seeds were a "sore puzzle" to him (letter to J. D. Hooker of 10 December 1866; Darwin Correspondence Project, I available online i ). We compared the dispersal rate of I R. melanocarpa i with two fleshy-fruited species, I Ocotea pulchella i (Lauraceae; 7.7 × 6.0 mm, one seed per fruit) and I Schefflera vinosa i (Araliaceae; 7.2 × 8.5 mm, two seeds per fruit). The inset shows a seed of R. melanocarpa among the seeds of fleshy fruits on a seed trap. We found a total of 18 dispersed seeds from I R. melanocarpa i (monthly average ± SE = 3.0 ± 1.0 seeds), 26 I O. pulchella i seeds (4.3 ± 1.8 seeds), and 807 I S. vinosa i seeds (134.5 ± 70.5 seeds) in the seed traps. [Extracted from the article]