The article I chose for the monkey puzzle tree forum was “An overlooked plant-parakeet mutualism counteracts human overharvesting on an endangered tree” by Speziale et al. As suggested by the title, the paper explores a mutualism between the monkey puzzle tree Araucaria Araucana and the Austral parakeet Enicognathus ferrugineus. Specifically, the relationship involves the partial or whole consumption of the seeds of the monkey puzzle tree by E.ferrugineus. Though often the parakeet will consume the seeds of the monkey puzzle tree whole, some seeds remain only partially eaten. As the monkey puzzle tree is harvested by human seed collectors who only harvest whole seeds, partially eaten seeds will be avoided. These partially eaten seeds were the target of research in order to find whether they may allow for propagation to occur, which would counteract the negative effects of overharvesting of seeds on the monkey puzzle tree. To do this, partially eaten seeds underwent testing to assess their germination potential in laboratory conditions. Three different seed types (intact, partially eaten by parakeet, and simulated damage by parakeet) were tested with 50 replicates each. Hand-cut seeds were found to have the highest germination rate, followed by partially eaten seeds, and the slowest to germinate were intact seeds. Due to these results, it was suggested that overharvesting of the intact monkey puzzle tree seeds alongside partial consumption of seeds by parakeets may lead to selection for improved regeneration in seeds which would lead to a change in the parakeet-monkey puzzle tree relationship from an antagonistic relationship to a mutualistic one (Speziale et al., 2018).
Reference:
Speziale, K. L., Lambertucci, S. A., Gleiser, G., Tella, J. L., Hiraldo, F., & Aizen, M. A. (2018). An overlooked plant-parakeet mutualism counteracts human overharvesting on an endangered tree. Royal Society open science, 5(1), 171456. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171456
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 