Rodent scatterhoarders as conditional mutualists.

Abstract

This paper discusses the interaction between plants and the rodents that scatterhoard their seeds (i.e. cache seeds individually or in small groups in numerous cache locations) can be viewed as a conditional mutualism that depends in part on two factors that can vary in time and space: (1) the relative abundance of seeds versus scatterhoarders (the seed:scatterhoarder ratio) and (2) the potential recruitment of seedlings that are not handled by scatterhoarders versus recruitment when seeds are handled by scatterhoarders. A simple conceptual model of how the outcome of the scatterhoarder-plant interaction depends on both the relative abundance of each partner and the challenges to recruitment faced by the plant is presented.