Thieving rodents are 'rainforest saviours'

The thieving habits of rodents have emerged as an unlikely salvation of tropical forests, research suggests.

Massive mammals known as gomphotheres once ranged the Americas, distributing big tree seeds as they roamed.

But they are extinct, and it has not been clear what is spreading seeds now.

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists report using radio tags to show that rodents take and bury seeds, stealing from each other, spreading them far and wide.

One of the seeds passed through the paws of 36 agoutis - half-metre-long rodents common in the forests of Central and South America.

The first agouti to get to a seed carried it an average of 8.75m from its parent tree.

But after repeated burials and disinterments - usually by different agoutis - it ended up an average of 68m distant.

"Agoutis moved seeds at a scale that none of us had ever imagined," said lead researcher Patrick Jansen, who holds posts at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and at Wageningen and Groningen Universities in The Netherlands.

Continued: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18856362