Flying fox (Pteropus tonganus)
Dominant flying foxes defend fruiting trees as territories, repelling
subordinate intruders that seize fruit to consume in a distant location.
Since dominant, territorial individuals rarely move away from the trees
they defend, most seeds dispersed by these individuals fall below the
mother tree. Since subordinate individuals move seeds further distances
from the mother tree, these individuals provide higher-quality and
long-distance seed dispersal (Fig. 2B). However, in order for
subordinate individuals to exhibit this fruit-thieving strategy, all
fruiting trees need to be saturated with dominant, fruit-defending
individuals. McConkey et al. (2006) show that once flying fox densities
fell below a certain threshold, trees were no longer saturated by
dominant individuals, allowing most individuals to remain in their
trees, reducing the frequency of fruit-thieving behaviors and rates of
seed dispersal away from defended trees.