Future Directions
While centuries of research have been devoted to characterizing and
understanding animal social behavior, there is a surprisingly limited
amount of knowledge of how social behaviors affect trophic interactions
to generate patterns in communities. Since animal social status has
predictable, well-documented effects on individual diet and movement,
investigating how animal social behaviors contribute to intraspecific
variation in seed dispersal effectiveness may explain much of the
unresolved variation in seed dispersal and plant recruitment. There is
an important lacuna in non-primate systems for understanding how social
status may explain intraspecific variation in diet and space use, and
consequently seed dispersal effectiveness. While a few studies show that
social status explains individual diet composition in some potential
seed-dispersing vertebrates (e.g., pampas foxes and pronghorn; Dennehy
2001; Castillo et al. 2011), there is limited knowledge of how it may
explain the well-documented dietary variation in omnivorous species
where social status is known to determine resource access, such as many
carnivore species (Box 1). Since this current lacuna is likely due to
the difficulty of tracking both seed fate and the behaviors of cryptic
animals, we suggest methods for systems where animal behavior and seed
fate cannot be measured by direct human observation of wild animals
(Table 1).
Our framework also highlights that individual social status may play an
unappreciated role in determining post-dispersal seed survival and
recruitment when individuals of different social statuses utilize
different habitat types. We therefore strongly suggest that future
research measuring individual behavior, social status, and seed movement
also evaluate the quality of seed-deposition sites by measuring rates of
post-dispersal seed predation and seedling establishment (Table 1). We
predict that this framework will be most important in systems where
plant species are dispersal limited, animal social status affects
individual diet and movement, and fleshy fruit is an essential dietary
supplement for subordinate individuals (e.g., carnivore and folivore
populations). Understanding how social status affects seed dispersal may
be most critical in systems where animal social structure is modified or
destabilized, illuminating cryptic hotspots of seed dispersal loss.