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.