(Inside Science) — Ecologists call them the living dead: trees that stand across the tropics and beyond, in the midst of transformed landscapes where they can no longer reproduce. They may appear healthy for centuries, but eventually they will fall — and then their lineage will vanish.
One reason for their dire fate: The animals some such trees rely on to disperse their seeds are making fewer and fewer visits. Sean MacDonald is working to call them back — if not the original seed dispersers, then whatever fruit-eating animals are now available. The trick is to speak the animals’ language, playing the sounds they make when they find a feast.
“All you really need is just a speaker and some batteries,” said MacDonald, an ecologist at the Illinois Division of Natural Heritage in Springfield, who conducted the research while a master’s student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
