Abstract:
When four 400-fruit crops and one 5000-fruit crop of Enterolobium cyclocarpum
(Leguminosae) were presented to 17 range horses in the
early rainy season in a 10 ha pasture in the deciduous forest lowlands of
Pacific coastal Costa Rica (Santa Rosa National Park), they consumed
all of the 6600 fruits in about in about eight days. For the first six days
of foraging, the horses ate an average of 46 to 71 fruits per day per
horse. The horses appeared to prefer to forage in the large fruit crop.
The small crops disappeared at quite different rates, apparently owing
to small differences in their locations. In their daily movements, the
horses made repeated trips between the fruit crops below sparse trees
and the more open grazing areas. Fruit consumption rates by the horses
and the timing of fruit drop by E. cyclocarpum trees should influence
the seed defecation rates of the horses; these rates influence the probability
that the seeds in the dung will be found by seed predators.
