Frugivore

A frugivore (/fruːdʒɪvɔːr/) is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds.

While many fruit-producing plant species would not disperse far without frugivores, their seeds can usually germinate even if they fall to the ground directly below their parent.

[3] This lack of specialization could be because fruit availability varies by season and year, which tends to discourage frugivore animals from focusing on just one plant species.

[7] Many seed-dispersing animals have specialized digestive systems to process fruits, which leave seeds intact.

Some seed-dispersing frugivores have short gut-retention times, and others can alter intestinal enzyme composition when eating different types of fruits.

Many frugivorous birds feed mainly on fruits until nesting season, when they incorporate protein-rich insects into their diet.

Facultatively-baccivorous birds may also eat bitter berries, such as juniper, in months when alternative foods are scarce.

[13][14] The earliest of these field studies were conducted in the fall of 1974 in upstate New York by Robert Rybczynski & Donald K. Riker[15] and separately by John W. Baird[16] in New Jersey, each documenting ingestion of fruits in stands of fruit-bearing shrubs by mixed species assemblages dominated by migrant white-throated sparrows.

[citation needed] One example of a mammalian frugivore is the maned wolf, or Chrysocyon brachyurus, which is found in South America.

A study by José Carlos Motta-Junior and Karina Martins found that the maned wolf is probably an important seed disperser.

Orangutans primarily eat fruit, along with young leaves, bark, flowers, honey, insects, and vines.

They prefer small, ripe fruit when available and in order to find these, they forage in large-crown trees (larger than ten meters [32.8 ft]) (Wright 1986).

[21] Consequently, anthropogenic habitat loss and change may negatively affect some frugivore species but benefit others.