Discussion Questions Week 7

Discussion questions for Hulme and Benkman Granivory chapter

1. How would you expect predation on seeds to differ from predation on vegetation?

2. How would you model seed selection by granivores? What factors affect interactions between granivores and plants?

3. What is the Janzen-Connell Hypothesis of seed dispersal, and how would you test it?

4. How would you test the hypothesis that plant population establishment is limited by competition with other plants or predation by granivores? What effects might both have on seed size, and how would you study this?

5. How would you test the hypothesis that granivore populations are limited by their food supply as opposed to being limited by predators?

6. How would you test the evolutionary history of plant defenses, and specifically discriminate between escape and radiation evolution versus plant competition?

7. How would you test the hypothesis that periodic and synchronous productions of seed is an evolutionary stable strategy? What is an evolutionary stable strategy?

8. What factors might counter the role of granivory in selection for seed size and forager morphology?

9. Why are pre-dispersal seed predators more predisposed to evolving coevolutionary relationships with seed plants than post-dispersal seed predators?