Of ghosts and germinations May 7 11:58
Today our paper on the seed dispersal and seedling establishment of a critically endangered endemic Mauritian tree went online, you can find a pdf of it here. The tree is, in fact, Syzygium mamillatum the gorgeous species that Christine is looking at in the previous post.
Its main content is focused on empirically testing the predictions of the Janzen-Connell model on an oceanic island, and in relation to practical conservation issues. The second focus of the paper, for which we present less empirical data, is the use of ecological analogues to replace extinct species – in our case resurrecting lost seed dispersal interactions using giant tortoises as stand-ins for extinct Mauritian giant tortoises. This is en exciting recent development in conservation and restoration ecology – and one which has to be used with extreme caution, to avoid unwanted ecosystem effects or new invasions. Tortoises are ideal analogues: they move slowly, they grow slowly, and they are thus easily controlled – and I for one have so far not heard of invasive tortoises anywhere on this planet.
And they are goddamn cute.