Courtesy of Richard Davies
Invertebrate seed predators, like this Alcidodes ramezii from Thailand, may exert selective pressure influencing El Niño-associated dipterocarp bumper crops.
Human activities often disrupt the delicate balance between predators and prey, but an unusual example has come to light among the equatorial rainforests of Indonesia. Dipterocarp, the economically important canopy trees that account for 70% of the region's biomass, are vanishing. Indeed, protected lowland trees in the Kalimantan region declined by more than 56% over a period of 15 years.1 Besides rampant logging, climate change may be responsible, by causing a disturbance of the El Niño southern ocean oscillation, which dipterocarp species have exploited in their battle with seed and fruit predators.
Dipterocarp species synchronously erupt into fruit every four or five years, with only isolated spasmodic fruiting in between. Rigorous field studies in recent years have confirmed that the cue for fruiting comes from weather changes ...
