A Study of the Reproduction of Fruiting Plants in Kyoto City

Abstract

The objective of the present research was to understand actual condition of fruiting trees' regeneration from seeds carried by birds in an urban environment and to identify the environmental factors that affect the regeneration. The distributions of fruiting trees and frugivorous birds that relate to the establishment of the trees were surveyed in the city of Kyoto and were stored in GIS with land cover data sets. As a result, the sun trees that are found in early stage of succession showed vigorous regeneration from seeds and exotic plant species were widening their distributions. Analysis on the environmental factors using 200-by-200-m space unit revealed that canopy coverage was the principal factor that affects the number of seedlings and that number of seed trees and population of frugivorous birds also highly affected the number of seedlings.