Figure 1. A) Social status has predictable effects on individual resource access and space use that may explain individual-level variation in seed dispersal effectiveness. Dominant individuals monopolize preferred resources, forcing subordinate individuals to supplement their diets to a greater extent with secondary resources. Subordinate individuals may then disperse disproportionately more or less seeds than dominant individuals, depending on whether fruit is the primary or secondary resource. While this hypothesis has been supported in recent work on Japanese macaques (Tsuji et al.2020), our framework demonstrates that this hypothesis could be applied to a broad range of taxa. Our framework is also novel in its demonstration of how social status may affect spatial patterns of seed dispersal, with clear consequences for seedling establishment. Dominant individuals typically defend territories with preferred habitat types, and subordinate individuals generally have less restricted home ranges, sample more habitat patches during a foray, and are more likely to go on extraterritorial forays. Subordinate individuals are consequently more likely to move seeds greater distances and deposit seeds in a broader diversity of habitat types. Since post-dispersal seed survival and plant recruitment are likely to vary across different habitats in a landscape (e.g., differences in granivore abundance or resource availability), the quality of seed dispersal services provided by subordinate individuals may differ substantially from dominant individuals. B) We provide predictions for the different types of seed dispersal kernels that may arise due to animal social behavior, highlighting that the outcome depends on food and habitat preferences of the animal dispersal agent.