美国科学60秒 SSS 2013-06-28（在线收听）

 　　Plants can choose where their seeds end up. Some float on the winds, others on the water. Many seeds hit the ride on or inside animals. And the farther seeds get from their parents and any predators of the disease the parent might have, the better chance of survive, or so the theory goes. Researchers study that phenomenon in the South America chili pepper () which releys on birds like fly catchers just spread the seed. To get realistic samples, researchers plot chili seeds from the droppings of captive fly catchers, then they scatter them near and far from wild chili bushes in Bolivia. Contrary to the prevailing theory, distant seeds fared no better than seeds beneath chili plants. But it turns out that the trip through the birds gives the seeds different competitive edge. The passage strips them of the predator attracting chemicals and pathogenical fungal which quite (rip) off the seeds survivor rate compared to their undigested counterparts. The results appear in the Journal of Ethology letters. So even though these chili seeds don't need to go the distance to survive, you might see that the seeds in the bird is worth about a fur on the bush.