Фруктоядные животные и распространение семян растений.

Organism that eats mostly fruit
the human diet

A frugivore (/f//r//uː//dʒ//ᵻ//v//ɔːr/) is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance and nutritional composition of fruits. Frugivores can benefit or hinder fruit producing plants by either dispersing or destroying their seeds through digestion. When both the fruit producing plant and the frugivore benefit by fruit eating behavior the interaction is a form of mutualism.

Seed dispersal is important for plants because it allows their progeny to move away from their parents over time. The advantages of seed dispersal may have led to the evolution of fleshy fruits, which entice animals to consume them and move the plant's seeds from place to place. 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. Many types of animals are seed dispersers. Mammal and bird species represent the majority of seed dispersing species. However, frugivorous tortoises, lizards, amphibians, and even fish also disperse seeds. For example, cassowaries are a keystone species because they spread fruit through digestion, many of the seeds of which will not grow unless they have been digested by the animal. While frugivores and fruit producing plant species are present worldwide, there is some evidence that tropical forests have more frugivore seed dispersers than the temperate zones.

Frugivore seed dispersal is a common phenomenon in many ecosystems. However, it is not a highly specific type of plant–animal interaction. For example, a single species of frugivorous bird may disperse fruits from several species of plants, or a few species of bird may disperse seeds of one plant species. 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.

Since seed dispersal allows plant species to disperse to other areas, the loss of frugivores could change plant communities and lead to the local loss of particular plant species. Since frugivore seed dispersal is so important in the tropics, many researchers have studied the loss of frugivores and related it to changed plant population dynamics. Several studies have noted that even the loss of only large frugivores, such as monkeys, could have a negative effect, since they are responsible for certain types of long distance seed dispersal that is not seen with other frugivore types, like birds. Frugivores can also benefit from the invasion of exotic fruit producing species and can be vectors of exotic invasion by dispersing non native seeds. Consequently, anthropogenic habitat loss and change may negatively affect some frugivore species but benefit others.