European Plant-Animal Seed Dispersal Interactions Across 447 Animal and 1901 Plant Species

447 animal species and 1901 plant species interact via four dispersal mechanisms in a Europe-wide dataset. Endozoochory by birds and mammals accounts for 90% of the recorded plant-animal interaction records. The data was published by Sara Beatriz Mendes on figshare in 2026 to analyze the complementarity of dispersal clades and mechanisms.

Use Cases

• Modeling seed dispersal network structure based on animal clade and dispersal mechanism.
• Assessing the predictive power of plant dispersal syndromes against empirical interaction data.
• Analyzing the relative contribution of birds, mammals, insects, and reptiles to plant dispersal services.
• Investigating trait-based relationships between fleshy-fruited/dry-fruited plants and their animal partners.

Strengths

• Covers 447 animal species and 1901 plant species, providing a multi-clade perspective.
• Quantifies interactions across four distinct dispersal mechanisms: endozoochory, epizoochory, synzoochory, and myrmecochory.
• Includes a specific finding that 90% of interaction records are from endozoochory by birds and mammals.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Geographic scope is limited to Europe.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Sara Beatriz Mendes.

Collection Method

Analysis of a compiled Europe-wide multi-clade seed dispersal dataset.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-19 09:48:57; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Europe