Throughout Amazonia, overfishing has decimated populations of fruit-eating fishes, especially the large-bodied characid, Colossoma macropomum. During lengthy annual floods, frugivorous fishes enter vast Amazonian floodplains, consume massive quantities of fallen fruits and egest viable seeds. Extensive mobility of frugivorous fish could result in extremely effective, multi-directional, long-distance seed dispersal.
Scientists from USA and Peru tracked fine-scale movement patterns and habitat use of wild Colossoma, and seed retention in the digestive tracts of captive individuals. At least 5 per cent of seeds are predicted to disperse 1700–2110 m, farther than dispersal by almost all other frugivores reported in the literature. Additionally, seed dispersal distances increased with fish size, but overfishing has biased Colossoma populations to smaller individuals. Thus, overexploitation probably disrupts an ancient coevolutionary relationship between Colossoma and Amazonian plants.
The findings are published in the latest Nature | Research Highlights and in the latest issue of Proceedings of The Royal Society: Biological Sciences
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