The ecology of seeds. Fenner M, Thompson K. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. £26 (softback) £55 (hardback) 260 pp.

Abstract

Chapter 2 discusses hazards during seeds' development, including poor pollination, resource limitation and pre-dispersal predation. The boxed discussion features low seed set in sparse populations (the Allee effect), an understanding of which has important consequences for potential extinction and conservation efforts to counteract it.The authors point out in Chapter 3 that probably few things in seed ecology have changed more in recent years than our understanding of the fascinating topic of seed dispersal. For example, for both wind- and animal-dispersed seeds there has been an underestimate of the importance of the ‘tails’ of distributions of dispersal distance; and the numbers of seeds achieving such extreme dispersal distances are mostly underestimated because of methodological problems. The boxed essay highlights how little we know about why the fleshy fruits of some plants, presumed to attract animal dispersers, are nevertheless poisonous.