Tobias Nicolas Rojas

Tobias Nicolas Rojas led a study testing whether combinations of fleshy-fruit traits predict the animals that disperse their seeds. The researchers measured traits of 134 species and compared these with documented fruit–disperser interactions. Separating morphological, chemical and visual traits allowed the proposed seed dispersal syndrome to be tested as a pattern, rather than assumed from a few familiar examples.^[ref]

For example, a strong relationship between fruit mass and diameter need not imply equally strong relationships with chemical traits. The study connects field observations to a specific question in ecology: how reliably can an interaction partner be inferred from an organism's measured features?