Question

Some species of plants produce relatively modest numbers of seed most years, but every so often the entire population produce massive amounts of seeds (masting). Explain how this relates to seed predation and give examples to illustrate your answer.

Answer 1

In some nut producing plants and grass family plants Masting is way of ensuring survival of offsprings by producing large no of seeds in short span in a particular season .

Masting has been related to many factors like limiting predation potential to overwhelm prey population, as a response to certain weather cues etc . Second factor is due to fact that seed serve as food for many herbivores like birds, rodents .

Take the case of Acorn which exhibit Masting by producing large no of seeds by most of its population .

This is seen as response of tree to pressure from predator (rodents) .Large no of seeds can lead to satiation of predator and save considerable no of survivors (seed) for establishment of new life .