Tambalacoque
Encyclopedia
Tambalacoque also called the Dodo Tree, is a long-lived tree in the family Sapotaceae
Sapotaceae
Sapotaceae is a family of flowering plants, belonging to order Ericales. The family includes approximately 800 species of evergreen trees and shrubs in approximately 65 genera . Distribution is pantropical....

, endemic
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...

 to Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

. The Dodo Tree is valued for its timber.

Tambalacoque is analogous to the peach
Peach
The peach tree is a deciduous tree growing to tall and 6 in. in diameter, belonging to the subfamily Prunoideae of the family Rosaceae. It bears an edible juicy fruit called a peach...

. Both have a hard endocarp surrounding the seed, with the endocarp naturally splitting along a fracture line during germination.

In 1973, it was thought that this species was dying out. There were supposedly only 13 specimens left, all estimated to be about 300 years old. The true age could not be determined because Tambalacoque has no growth rings. Stanley Temple
Stanley Temple
Stanley A. "Stan" Temple is an American avian ecologist and wildlife biologist. He is the Beers-Bascom Professor in Conservation, Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

 hypothesized that the Dodo
Dodo
The dodo was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about , living on fruit, and nesting on the ground....

, which became extinct in the 17th century, ate tambalacoque fruits, and only by passing through the digestive tract of the Dodo could the seeds germinate. Temple (1977) force-fed seventeen tambalacoque fruits to wild turkeys
Turkey (bird)
A turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris. One species, Meleagris gallopavo, commonly known as the Wild Turkey, is native to the forests of North America. The domestic turkey is a descendant of this species...

 and three germinated. Temple did not try to germinate any seeds from control fruits not fed to turkeys so the effect of feeding fruits to turkeys was unclear. Reports made on tambalacoque seed germination by Hill (1941) and King (1946) found the seeds germinated without abrading.

Temple's hypothesis that the tree required the dodo has been contested. Others have suggested the decline of the tree was exaggerated, or that other extinct animals may also have been distributing the seeds, such as tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...

s, fruit bat
Fruit Bat
Fruit Bat can refer to:* Megabats, a species of bat which eats fruit* Les "Fruitbat" Carter, guitarist of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine* Fruit Bats , an American band...

s or the Broad-billed Parrot
Broad-billed Parrot
The Broad-billed Parrot was a parrot endemic to the island of Mauritius that became extinct.-Description:...

. Wendy Strahm and Anthony Cheke, two experts in Mascarene
Mascarene Islands
The Mascarene Islands is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar comprising Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Cargados Carajos shoals, plus the former islands of the Saya de Malha, Nazareth and Soudan banks...

 ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

, claim that while a rare tree, it has germinated since the demise of the Dodo and numbers a few hundred, not 13. The difference in numbers is because young trees are not distinct in appearance and may easily be confused with similar species. The decline of the tree may possibly be due to introduction
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...

 of domestic pig
Domestic pig
The domestic pig is a domesticated animal that traces its ancestry to the wild boar, and is considered a subspecies of the wild boar or a distinct species in its own right. It is likely the wild boar was domesticated as early as 13,000 BC in the Tigris River basin...

s and Crab-eating Macaque
Crab-eating Macaque
The Crab-eating macaque is a cercopithecine primate native to Southeast Asia. It is also called the "long-tailed macaque", and is referred to as the "cynomolgus monkey" in laboratories.-Etymology:...

s and competition with introduced plants. Catling (2001) in a summary cites Owadally and Temple (1979), and Witmer (1991). Hershey (2004) reviewed the flaws in Temple's dodo-tambalacoque hypothesis.

In 2004, Botanical Society of America's
Botanical Society of America
The Botanical Society of America represents professional and amateur botanists, researchers, educators and students in over 80 countries of the world...

 Plant Science Bulletin disputed Dr. Temple's research as flawed which published evidence as to why the dodo's extinction did not directly cause the increasing disappearance of young calvaria trees including suggestion that tortoises would have been more likely to disperse the seeds than dodo hence discrediting Temple's view as to the dodo and the Calvaria's sole survival relationship.

To aid the seed in germination, botanists now use turkeys and gem polishers
Tumble polishing
Tumble finishing, also known as tumbling or rumbling, is a technique for smoothing and polishing a rough surface on relatively small parts...

 to erode the endocarp to allow germination. This tree is highly valued for its wood in Mauritius, which has led some foresters to scrape the pits by hand to make them sprout and grow.

External links

  • Catling, P. M. (2001): Extinction and the importance of history and dependence in conservation. Biodiversity 2(3): 2-13 pdf
  • Helfferich, C. (1990): The Turkey and the Tambalacoque Tree
  • Hershey, D. R. (2004): The widespread misconception that the tambalacoque absolutely required the dodo for its seeds to germinate. Plant Science Bulletin 50: 105-108.
  • Hill, A. W. (1941): The genus Calvaria, with an account of the stony endocarp and germination of the seed, and description of the new species. Annals of Botany 5(4): 587-606. PDF fulltext (requires user account)
  • King, H. C. (1946): Interim Report on Indigenous Species in Mauritius. Port Louis, Mauritius: Government Printer.
  • Owadally, A. W. & Temple, Stanley A. (1979): The dodo and the tambalacoque tree. Science
    Science (journal)
    Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

    203(4387): 1363-1364.
  • Quammen, David (1996): The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. Touchstone, New York. ISBN 0684827123
  • Temple, Stanley A. (1977): Plant-animal mutualism: coevolution with Dodo leads to near extinction of plant. Science
    Science (journal)
    Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

    197(4306): 885-886. HTML abstract
  • Witmer, M. C. & Cheke, A. S. (1991): The dodo and the tambalacoque tree: an obligate mutualism reconsidered. Oikos
    Oikos (journal)
    Oikos is an international scientific journal published monthly by the Nordic Society Oikos in the field of ecology. It was previously known as Acta Oecologica Scandinavica....

    61(1): 133-137. HTML abstract
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