Mast seeding

[1] The term derives from the Old English mæst, meaning the nuts of forest trees that have accumulated on the ground, especially those used historically for fattening domestic pigs, and as food resources for wildlife.

[2][3] In the aseasonal tropics of Southeast Asia, entire forests, including hundreds of species of trees and shrubs, are known to mast at irregular periods of 2–12 years.

[4][5] More generally, mast is considered the edible vegetative or reproductive parts produced by woody species of plants, i.e. trees and shrubs, that wildlife and some domestic animals consume as a food source.

[6] Such events are population-level phenomena hypothesized to be driven by a wide variety of factors, depending on the plant species involved, including availability of nutrients, economies of scale, weather patterns, and as a form of predator satiation.

[8][5] Hypotheses for the evolution of mast seeding can broadly be assigned to three categories: economies of scale, resource matching, and proximate cues (i.e.

[8] The main limiting resources include water, carbon in the form of nonstructural carbohydrates, and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

A positive effect of increased white-footed mouse population is that they prey on gypsy moths, which are a major forest pest in the eastern United States.

[10] The interaction between disturbance by fire and mast seeding is key to white spruce regeneration and subsequent stand dynamics in the boreal mixed-wood forest.

Rapid seedbed deterioration is likely to augment the mast-year effect for white spruce as compared with species that are less dependent on short-lived, disturbance-created regeneration microsites.

[21] Predicting how the intensity and frequency of mast seeding may be altered by climate change will help researchers to determine shifts in the availability of food resources to wildlife and forest dynamics.