Si-Chong Chen, a professor at the University of Hong Kong\u2019s<\/a> School of Biological Sciences, led the team behind it. <\/p>\n She worked with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Durham University in the United Kingdom, and Kobe University in Japan. <\/p>\n Tiny animals spread seeds underground<\/p>\n None of the animals in this review are the ones you\u2019d expect: slugs, earthworms, beetles, crickets, and crabs<\/a>, all eating seeds along with the fruit or plant matter around them.<\/p>\n The seeds don\u2019t die in the process. They pass through the gut and come out able to sprout.<\/p>\n Kenji Suetsugu, a professor at Kobe University and a co-author on the review, pointed to one example.<\/p>\n \u201cA single crab can ingest over a thousand tiny seeds in a single night and later deposit them inside underground burrows<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese humid burrows can protect the seeds from being eaten by rodents or drying out, giving them a better chance to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n Hidden seed dispersers underground<\/p>\n Bird and mammal seed dispersal has received decades of attention for good reason.<\/p>\n A monkey or a toucan can carry a seed a long way from the tree it fell off. That distance cuts down competition between a seedling and its parent, and it can push a species into new territory.<\/p>\n Chen\u2019s team looked for the version that happens underground, a pathway scientists call invertebrate endozoochory. In practice, that means a seed passes through a small animal\u2019s gut and comes out alive.<\/p>\n Across the 43 studies the team reviewed, they found this process in at least 51 invertebrate<\/a> species and 186 different plants, with records from Oceania, Asia, Europe, and North America.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you walk through a forest, you might think only birds or monkeys are spreading seeds,\u201d Suetsugu said. \u201cBut beneath our feet, a hidden group of gardeners is also at work.\u201d<\/p>\n Plants evolved for tiny dispersers<\/p>\n Chen\u2019s team noticed something else, too. Plants that depend on ground-dwelling invertebrates tend to grow small, tough seeds tucked inside dull, plain fruit that sits close to the soil.<\/p>\n Bright fruit up in a tree canopy is a billboard for birds. Dull fruit down in the leaf litter is easy to miss unless you\u2019re a slug or a beetle crawling right past it.<\/p>\n There may be a small bonus, too. A seed\u2019s coat can wear down on the way through a gut, and a worn coat sometimes sprouts more easily than one that never got touched. <\/p>\n The seed lands afterward in soil, leaf litter, or a burrow, all places with moisture and cover.<\/p>\n A slug isn\u2019t hauling a seed across a mountain range<\/a>, and no invertebrate on this list gets close to what a bird can manage.<\/p>\n Chen said that was never really the point. \u201cTiny invertebrates like beetles or slugs cannot carry seeds for kilometres, but their ability to place seeds precisely at fine spatial scales is incredibly important,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cThey reduce competition near the parent tree and deliver seeds into favourable micro-niches.\u201d<\/p>\n Small size hid big impact<\/p>\n Chen thinks the field undercounted these animals for a simple reason. Each one is tiny, and one slug eating a few seeds looks like nothing next to a monkey stripping a whole fruiting tree.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThese interactions have long been treated as ecological anecdotes rather than as part of a wider framework,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of size bias, invertebrates were traditionally viewed as minor players compared with mammals or birds,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n \u201cBut when we look at their abundance and the number of documented interactions, their cumulative contribution to ecosystems can be substantial.\u201d<\/p>\n Multiply one small act by millions of animals doing it constantly, and the total stops looking small. <\/p>\n \u201cChanging our perspective helps us recognize that plant-animal partnerships are more diverse and interwoven than previously assumed,\u201d Chen said.<\/p>\n Small animals fill the gap<\/p>\n None of this diminishes birds and mammals<\/a>, and Chen\u2019s team isn\u2019t arguing that it should.<\/p>\n Long-distance dispersal still needs an animal big enough to travel far. What this review adds is a second, smaller-scale system that keeps working even when larger animals don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Large mammals and birds are thinning out worldwide, squeezed by hunting, habitat fragmentation, and other human pressures. A plant that depended entirely on those animals loses its ride when they disappear.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are losing large mammals and birds at an alarming rate globally, which threatens the future of many plant species,\u201d Chen said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an increasingly fragmented world, these small-bodied partners offer a vital safety net, helping forest regeneration persist even as larger animals decline.\u201d<\/p>\n What scientists need next<\/p>\n Chen\u2019s team added no new field data of its own. Instead, the researchers went back through decades of scattered records and found a real pattern instead of a stack of one-off curiosities.<\/p>\n What Chen\u2019s group wants next is a count: how often this actually happens across different habitats and how much it changes a seed\u2019s odds of surviving and sprouting.<\/p>\n Nobody has measured invertebrates spreading seeds against bird and mammal dispersal across an entire forest over a season. <\/p>\n That number doesn\u2019t exist yet, but it would tell conservation planners how much this smaller seed spreading system really contributes.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Trends in Plant Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A seed doesn\u2019t need wings to travel, just something willing to eat it. Most people picture a bird…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-587181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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