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Rodent-favored cache sites do not favor seedling establishment of shade-intolerant wild apricot (Prunus armeniaca Linn.) in northern China

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Abstract

Seed dispersal by scatter hoarders is widely assumed to involve directed dispersal, in which microhabitats selected for caching also benefit seedling establishment and growth. However, in many systems, this may not be true if animal-favored cache sites do not match the safe sites for plants, or if cache sites benefit the plant in one life stage and not another. Here, we investigated whether cache sites selected by rodents are favorable for seedling establishment and growth of shade-intolerant wild apricot (Prunus armeniaca Linn.) in northern China. We tracked tagged seeds and compared the germination and growth of seedlings from rodent-cached seeds with that of naturally established seedlings in a secondary forest and shrubland stand. Rodents preferred to cache seeds under shrubs with medium canopy cover (31–60 %) in litter substrate in the secondary forest, and under shrubs with high canopy cover (>60 %) in soil or litter substrate in the shrubland stand, neither of which conveyed an advantage for seedling establishment. Although fewer caches were made along shrub edges, or under low canopy cover (≤30 %) in the secondary forest, or along shrub edges, open areas of grass, or under low canopy cover in the shrubland stand, these cache sites consistently contributed to higher survival rates. The microhabitats of grass, soil, or low canopy cover significantly promoted the emergence, survival, and growth of naturally established seedlings. Our results are best explained by the conflicting demands of rodents for caching seeds in more secure sites and P. armeniaca’s high-light requirements for seedling recruitment. We argue that the relationship between favored cache sites for seed hoarders and safe sites for plants will often not match but may still allow a reasonable rate of establishment and regeneration.

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Acknowledgments

We thank F. Wang, C. Yi, Y. Li, and X. Shang for assistance with field work. M. A. Steele acknowledges the support of a Bullard Fellowship from Harvard Forest during preparation of the manuscript. This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31172102, 30800120, 30930016), the CCNU Project (CCNU11A02010), and the State Basic Research Program of China (2007BC109102).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Animal Behaviour Research Group, College of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Hongmao Zhang, Yang Luo & Zheng Yang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Hongmao Zhang, Yu Wang & Zhibin Zhang

  3. Department of Biology, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 18766, USA

    Michael A. Steele

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  1. Hongmao Zhang
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  2. Yang Luo
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  3. Michael A. Steele
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  4. Zheng Yang
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  5. Yu Wang
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  6. Zhibin Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhibin Zhang.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 1.

Table 1 Distributions of rodent-made caches of wild apricot (Prunus armeniaca) seeds, cache survival patterns, and seedling establishment and survival across different categories of vegetation type, substrate or levels of canopy cover
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Zhang, H., Luo, Y., Steele, M.A. et al. Rodent-favored cache sites do not favor seedling establishment of shade-intolerant wild apricot (Prunus armeniaca Linn.) in northern China. Plant Ecol 214, 531–543 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0187-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0187-9

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