How spatiotemporal cognition and movement of seed-dispersing animals influence plant distribution

The scenarios discussing the evolution of the spatiotemporal cognitive abilities of vagile plant eaters generally assume that their movement strategies are linked to their cognitive abilities, which are themselves shaped by the distribution patterns of plants considered invariant over long time periods. Yet, if plant distribution patterns are likely to remain unchanged over short time periods, they may change over long time periods as a result of animal exploitation. In particular, animals can shape the environment by dispersing plant seeds. Using an agent-based model simulating the foraging behaviour of a seed disperser endowed with spatiotemporal knowledge of resource distribution, I investigated whether resource spatiotemporal patterns could be influenced by the level of spatiotemporal cognition involved in foraging. This level of spatiotemporal cognition represented how well the agent predicted resource locations and phenology. I showed that seed-dispersing agents moving based on spatiotemporal memory could affect resource distribution in the long-term through routine movements between known patches, with a larger effect the higher the level of spatiotemporal cognition. The level of engineering also resulted from the conjunction of two additional forces: the agent’s movement strategy (e.g., including opportunistic visits to plants encountered en route or not) and competition for space between plants. In turn, resource landscape modifications affected the benefits of spatiotemporal memory. This could create eco-evolutionary feedback loops between animal spatiotemporal cognition and the distribution patterns of plant resources. Combined with previous works, the results emphasise that spatiotemporal cognition is a cause and a consequence of resource heterogeneity.