Researchers from the University of Calgary, the Centro de Conservación Guanacaste, the University of Exeter, and the College of Central Florida discovered that in Costa Rica, mammals tend to disseminate wild fruits with a greater alcohol level than those with a lower alcohol concentration.
The crew gathered and analyzed fruit from a tropical forest for alcohol concentration as part of their investigation, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They then tracked the fruit’s distribution.
Previous studies have demonstrated that plants have evolved a wide range of characteristics that serve to encourage dispersal, a trait that aids in survival. Plants of the same sort are prevented from competing for the same local resources through dispersal, which occurs in a variety of ways, from trees that produce helicopter seeds to plants that physically eject their seeds.
The research team looked into the potential for alcohol enticement as a technique of spreading fruit-bearing plants in Costa Rica in its latest endeavor.
Fruits don’t naturally make alcohol; instead, they provide a variety of sugars that draw yeasts, which then ferment the sugar to produce alcohol. Fruit with alcohol in them may act as a vehicle for seed dissemination by luring animals to consume them and deposit the seeds in their excrement.
In order to find out, the researchers went fruit gathering in a tropical dry forest in Costa Rica. Some of the fruit was collected directly from the plants while they were still growing and some was collected from the ground where it had been dropped.
Each piece of fruit was placed through a breathalyzer test after being sealed in a plastic bag for an hour back at the lab. The scientists matched the findings to data from a database that contained details about the plants under investigation, including which creatures consumed the fruit.
They were able to determine the dispersal distances by using data such as how far birds generally transport fruit compared to small rodents. For their work, they included only fruit that was typically eaten by mammals.
The research team discovered that alcohol was present in 78% of the fruit they collected. They also discovered a pattern: Fruits with higher alcohol content tended to be distributed more broadly than fruits with lower alcohol content. They point out that this shows alcohol content may encourage wider distribution.
