Tiny plants ride on the coattails of migratory birds

Tiny plants ride on the coattails of migratory birds
by Staff Writers
Storrs CT (SPX) Jun 13, 2014


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Each year 500,000 American golden-plovers (pictured) fly
between Arctic N. America and South America with
potentially hundreds of thousands of diaspores trapped in
their feathers. Image courtey Jean-Francois Lamarre,
CC BY SA. [/font]

Since the days of Darwin, biologists have questioned why certain plants occur in widely separated places, the farthest reaches of North American and the Southern tip of South America but nowhere in between. How did they get there? An international team of researchers have now found an important piece of the puzzle: migratory birds about to fly to South America from the Arctic harbor small plant parts in their feathers.

In the past several decades, scientists have discovered that the North - South distributions of certain plants often result from a single jump across the tropics, not as a result of gradual movements or events that occurred over a hundred million years ago. These single jumps across the tropics have led many to speculate that migratory birds play a role, however those claims have remained speculative.

A team of 10 biologists, including three undergraduate students, collected feathers in the field and used microscopes to closely examine them. They found a total of 23 plant fragments that were trapped in the feathers of long-distance migratory birds about to leave for South America.

The fragments were all thought to be able to grow into new plants hence indicating that they could be used to establish new plant populations. Several of the plant parts belonged to mosses, which are exceptionally tough plants. About half of all moss species can self-fertilize to produce offspring, and many can grow as clones. For these plants, it only takes a single successful dispersal event to establish a new population.

More:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Tiny_plants_ride_on_the_coattails_of_migratory_birds_999.html