Outstanding
- La Fundación Jaime González-Gordon ofrece cuatro becas para el desarrollo de Trabajos de Fin de Máster sobre Doñana
- Five contracts to carry out a doctoral thesis in the Doñana Biological Station - CSIC
- Actividades de la Estación Biológica de Doñana en la Noche Europea de los Investigadores
- ICTS-RBD prepares the 30th Migratory Passerine Bird Ringing Campaign in Doñana
- Start of selection procedure for new EBD Director
News
Waterbirds can disperse whole plants inside their guts
It is well known that some plants and plant fragments can become attached to the feathers of ducks and other waterbirds and be transported short distances. An increasing diversity of plant seeds have also been shown to survive gut passage and to be able to disperse longer distances inside migratory birds. For the first time, this paper shows that entire flowering plants can be dispersed on the inside. Wolffia is a small form of duckweed and is the smallest of all flowering plants. In Brazil, intact W. columbiana were recovered from the droppings of the Coscoroba and the white-faced whistling duck, then grown in the laboratory. This novel dispersal mechanism may explain why W. columbiana is rapidly expanding as an alien species in Europe. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es: Silva et al (2018) Whole angiosperms Wolffia columbiana disperse by gut passage through wildfowl in South America. Biol Lett 14: 20180703 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0703