Understanding mast seeding for conservation and land management

Abstract

Masting, the intermittent and synchronous production of large seed crops, can have profound consequences for plant populations and the food webs that are built on their seeds. For centuries, people have recorded mast crops because of their importance in managing wildlife populations. In the past 30 years, we have begun to recognize the importance of masting in conserving and managing many other aspects of the environment: promoting the regeneration of forests following fire or other disturbance, conserving rare plants, conscientiously developing the use of edible seeds as non-timber forest products, coping with the consequences of extinctions on seed dispersal, reducing the impacts of plant invasions with biological control, suppressing zoonotic diseases and preventing depredation of endemic fauna. We summarize current instances and future possibilities of a broad set of applications of masting. By exploring in detail several case studies, we develop new perspectives on how solutions to pressing conservation and land management problems may benefit by better understanding the dynamics of seed production. A lesson common to these examples is that masting can be used to time management, and often, to do this effectively, we need models that explicitly forecast masting and the dynamics of seed-eating animals into the near-term future. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants’.

The ecology and evolution of synchronized reproduction in long-lived plants

“…[68,69]). In newly established forests, or those recovering from disturbance, ontogenetic changes in masting will have important implications for management [5], irrespective of any parallel changes in masting resulting from environmental change [35].…”

“…The European Union's Biodiversity Strategy 2030 [90] calls for the planting of an additional 3 billion trees within a decade, an effort that will be strongly impacted by seed availability and its spatio-temporal variability. In the Anthropocene, the focus has also shifted to controlling invasive plants and animals, forecasting the risk of zoonotic diseases that cycle with mast crops, and collecting seeds for food [5], as masting also occurs in many cultivated fruit and nut crops. In agriculture, this phenomenon is usually known as 'alternate cropping' or 'alternate bearing' and is characteristic of many commonly grown fruit crops, including apples, cherries and chestnuts [2].…”

“…Fundamentally, masting creates year-to-year variation that has important ecosystem consequences. Accounting for that variation when modelling community demographics, analysing plant response to climate change, and collecting seeds for restoration or assisted migration can greatly improve their success [5,55,91].…”

“…One major motivation to study masting is that it is an important ecosystem process that affects how we manage the environment [5]. A consideration of masting is important when assessing the future of the world's forests and other habitats dominated by masting species, monitoring and managing the populations of rare masting plants and seedeating animals, as well as collecting and dispersing seed for restoration or assisted migration.…”

“…The relationship between weather and resource dynamics, such as crop fluctuations and plant regeneration, likely constituted some of the earliest ecological knowledge passed over generations, particularly before such dynamics were stabilized with the onset of agriculture [1]. For humans, the importance of extensive temporal variation and spatial synchrony in seed production within and across plant populations-a phenomenon broadly termed masting or mast seeding-has transitioned from a matter of survival, starvation or migration to one of arboriculture, forestry, wildlife management, conservation and disease prevention [2][3][4][5].…”