page_title: Simarouba amara
section_title: Seed dispersal
hierarchical_section_title: Simarouba amara / Reproduction / Seed dispersal
caption_attribution_description: adult male mantled howler monkey (Alouatta paliatta) in Costa Rican Pacific Dry Forests
context_page_description: Simarouba amara is a species of tree in the family Simaroubaceae, found in the rainforests and savannahs of South and Central America and the Caribbean. It was first described by Aubl. in French Guiana in 1775 and is one of six species of Simarouba. The tree is evergreen, but produces a new set of leaves once a year. It requires relatively high levels of light to grow and grows rapidly in these conditions, but lives for a relatively short time. In Panama, it flowers during the dry season in February and March, whereas in Costa Rica, where there is no dry season it flowers later, between March and July. As the species is dioecious, the trees are either male or female and only produce male or female flowers. The small yellow flowers are thought to be pollinated by insects, the resulting fruits are dispersed by animals including monkeys, birds and fruit-eating bats and the seeds are also dispersed by leaf cutter ants.
  Simarouba amara has been studied extensively by scientists in an attempt to understand the tree and also to gain a better understanding of the ecology of the rainforest in general.
context_section_description: The seeds of S. amara are dispersed by vertebrates, mainly large birds and mammals, including chachalacas, flycatchers, motmots, thrushes, howler monkeys, tamarins and spider monkeys. Leaf cutter ants have also been observed to disperse the seeds and dense seedling carpets form in areas where they dump waste material but most of the seedlings die and dispersal by the ants is thought to be unimportant in determining the long-term patterns of recruitment and dispersal. Seeds that are eaten by monkeys are more likely to germinate than seeds that have not. Fruit-eating phyllostomid bats have also been noted to disperse their seeds; this may aid the regeneration of forests as they disperse the seeds of later successional species while they feed on S. amara.
  Based on inverse modelling of data from seed traps on BCI, the estimated average dispersal distance for seeds is 39 m. Studying seedlings and parent trees on BCI using DNA microsatellites revealed that, in fact on average, seedlings grow 392 m away from their parents, with a standard deviation of ±234 m and a range of between 9 m and 1 km. In the forest there are many seeds and seedlings beneath reproductive females; genetic data indicate that seedlings are unlikely to be from nearby adults, but rather dispersed there by vertebrates that have fed on one tree and then moved to feed on another, defecating while in the canopy and depositing the seeds.
caption: A mantled howler, one animal that disperses the seeds of S. amara
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