As the mistletoe has been in Australia for a long time and mistletoebirds for a relatively short time, the mistletoe seed was distributed originally by non-specialized frugivore birds like the honeyeater.
32.
Atelines are frugivore-folivores, their diet consisting primarily of fruits, seeds and leaves, with " Ateles " being the most frugivorous, fruits comprising over 80 % of their diet.
33.
The shape of the molars indicates that " Pelycodus ", like " Cantius " and unlike later folivorous Notharctines such as " Notharctus " and " Smilodectes ", was most likely a frugivore, though perhaps not as strictly as " Cantius ".
34.
Dr . Henry F . Howe, an ecologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago who is considered one of the founders of the growing field of fruit-frugivore studies, said that in the American tropics, 90 to 100 percent of trees and shrubs bear fruit whose seeds are dispersed by animals.
35.
As a frugivore, " P . lucasi " may provide a valuable ecological service to humans in the dispersal of seeds of the plants they consume away from the parent tree, either through spitting the seeds out or passing them through the gut ( Feldhamer " et al . ", 1999 ).
36.
The teeth of " A . ramidus " lacked the specialization of other apes, and suggest that it was a generalized omnivore and frugivore ( fruit eater ) with a diet that did not depend heavily on foliage, fibrous plant material ( roots, tubers, etc . ), or hard and or abrasive food.
37.
Describing the Ecology reports as among the first of their kind, Dr . Henry F . Howe, an ecologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who helped found this area of research, fruit-frugivore studies, said, " They've taken a first big step by testing the fruit with very different vertebrates ."
