4.5 Conclusion
Increases in tracking studies, coupled with the advancement of tracking technology, has led to an exponential increase in seed dispersal studies over the past 17 years, particularly those that estimate seed dispersal distances. This offers a step forward in understanding how changes to landscape structure, e.g., from land-use change, can affect plant colonisation and forest recovery through understanding the movement patterns and behaviours of frugivores through tracking.
We see the next step forward in future seed dispersal studies as straightforward: more studies and repetition. Long-term tracking studies from diverse taxa are necessary to collect movement and behaviour information. Many current tracking studies are limited by battery consumption and tag memory and are simply capturing a small snapshot of an individual’s life and do not consider how temporal changes (e.g., seasons, anomalous years) may affect movement. With longer-duration and finer-scale data, we can begin to understand the drivers of animal movement and the implications for seed dispersal and other ecosystem services in a changing world.
Ultimately, seed dispersal distances can successfully help inform restoration and conservation projects, but only if these estimations are accurate. Only by tracking frugivores can we ensure that this transpires. Through an understanding of seed dispersal, local organisations can manage landscapes to increase the potential of between-patch connectivity to encourage plant regeneration and gene flow.