In the Canary Islands, a good seed disperser is hard to find

It may seem like yet another set of picture-perfect tropical islands: high cliffs and modest hills rolling into the brilliant blue Atlantic Ocean. Scrubby bushes and small rocks dominate the entire landscape, and everything acquires a lovely tinge of warm sunshine. These vistas draw millions of people to the Canary Islands every year. But not everyone is here for the scenery, however lovely. Ecologists Néstor Pérez-Méndez from Río Negro National University in Argentina and Alfredo Valido from the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC) in Spain are more interested in the islands’ scrubby plants — and the plants’ surprising seed dispersers. “Gallotia lizards consume fruits and efficiently disperse seeds of approximately 50 plant species” of the archipelago’s 80 native species, says Pérez-Méndez. A male West Canaries Lizard (Gallotia galloti) endemic to the Canarian islands of Tenerife and La Palma. The lizard is one of seven species that eats fruits and disperses seeds in the islands. Image by Beneharo Rodríguez. Just 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the northwestern coast of Africa, the Canary Islands, an archipelago of seven islands and some small islets, are a strange biological fusion of European and African species and even remnants of life before the two continents formed. With no fruit-eating native mammals and very few bird species, endemic lacertids, or wall-climbing lizards, in the genus Gallotia have become the primary seed dispersers on the island. But there is a potential caveat. The lizards have to be large enough. Those fruit-eating giants Having arrived here about 17 million…

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