seed dispersal by frugivores without seed swallowing: evaluating the contributions of stomatochoric seed dispersers

The process of seed dispersal that underpins ecosystem maintenance is performed by diverse arrays of fruit-eating animals. However, seed dispersal studies are primarily focused on a subset of these animal communities that disperse seeds by endozoochory. Stomatochory (seed dispersal in which seeds are carried externally and are not swallowed) is rarely considered to be effective, despite an increasing number of taxa-focused studies that indicate otherwise.
We collated the available information on stomatochory to provide a quantitative overview of the dispersal mechanism, including plant-types and fruit-traits dispersed, dispersal distances and germination potential for all available taxa. We compared seed sizes dispersed, dispersal distances, and germination potential with corresponding data on endozoochory for bats and primates. We also identified the main taxa dispersing seeds by stomatochory and assessed what factors influenced the distances that they carried seeds to.
Stomatochoric d..., We searched for published articles reporting stomatochory observations using Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus. Searches included the words “seed carrying” or “pulp predators” or “pulp consumers” or “pulp feeders” or \"stomatochory\". We scanned the titles and abstracts of the papers to determine if they were likely to include information on stomatochory and extracted the appropriate information from the full paper. We also used these papers to identify taxa that regularly consumed pulp-only or often carried seeds away from parent crowns and conducted more intensive searches on these taxa (mainly primates, rodents, bats, parrots, corvids). We excluded papers on synzoochory and only included papers documenting carrying of fruits for the immediate consumption of pulp (e.g., by squirrels), or seeds (e.g., husking stations of rats). Ruminants are also identified as “seed spitters”, but in these cases seeds are transported in the rumen and are a form of endozoochory so are not consider..., , # Seed dispersal by frugivores without seed swallowing: evaluating the contributions of stomatochoric seed dispersers

The database collates information on stomatochoric seed dispersal interactions from articles published until 2022. All vertebrate seed dispersers were covered in the initial searches, but the final database consists of birds and mammals only, from across all habitat types and regions (for which data were available). Stomatochoric seed dispersal interactions are defined as dispersal occurring when seeds are transported in the mouth or limbs of the animal, without being swallowed. The database also contains data on endozoochoric interactions for cercopithecine monkeys and bats.

## Description of the data and file structure

The stomatochory database is an excel file with four worksheets.

In all datasheets NA refers to missing data.

`Main stomatochory dataset` has 20 columns; each row refers to a specific animal-plant interaction:

Animal family
Animal genus
Animal sp...