The Tambalacoque tree is threatened by extinction,
possibly because the
Dodo became extinct 300 years ago.
Thanks to an American ecologist, Stanley
Temple, this is
a story of "Seeds success".The island of Mauritius in the

Indian Ocean is the home of the Tambalacoque tree, which,
until the 17th
century, flourished in the hot and humid climate.
Then, all of a sudden, the
tree seemed to lose the ability to
grow from seed. Existing trees continued
to grow, but not one
of the seeds they shed would germinate. No answer was
found
to this botanical mystery, with the result that, by the 1970s,

there were only 13 Tambalacoque trees left in the world.

The Tambalacoque tree

It was then that an American ecologist, Stanley Temple,
noticed that the
Tambalacoque had stopped growing from seed
at precisely the time when the
island’s most celebrated former
resident, the Dodo, became exstinct. The
Dodo, a large,
flightless pigeon, had been killed for its meat by sailors

and the first settlers on the island. Were the two events connected?

Exstinct Dodo

Many seeds will germinate only after they have been eaten
by a particular
animal and passed through the digestive system.
If this were the case with
the Tambalacoque and the Dodo, the
tree would be doomed, unless a bird with a
similar gizzard
and gut could be found to act as a substitute. As an
experiment,
Temple fed Tambalacoque seeds to turkeys and gathered their
droppings.
Happily, some of these seeds did germinate, and there is hope
that
the Tambalacoque tree will survive.

Tags: Extinctantsdodo