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The Feast and Famine Strategy of Spruce Trees

The year-to-year variation cone production in spruce trees varies wildly. With some years producing incredible amounts that appear to be weighing down the tree, and other years producing hardly any. Additionally, all spruces in a forest will perfectly coordinate this feast or famine together each year without fail. How the spruce tree specifically communicate with each other to accomplish this feat is still not completely understood, but the reasons for this feast/famine cycle are. One reason mentioned in this article is to match up cone production with weather that is conducive for seed growth to maximize the probability of a sapling surviving. The second is to throw off seed eating predators, primarily the red squirrel.

This is where the feast/famine phenomenon can be viewed as a type of game. If the spruce trees always have consistent cone production each year, the predator population would just increase to the point where they are just eating all of the cones. This would make it difficult to nearly impossible to reproduce because all of the seeds are being eaten by the larger squirrel population. Ironically the inability for the spruce to propagate would damage the squirrel population in the long run. However, if the tree simply didn’t produce seeds that wouldn’t be helpful either. So the tree must solve the game using a non-static equilibrium by switching between feast and famine every few years. The tree needs to know how many years it takes for the squirrel population to decrease to low enough levels, and then know how long it can produce an excess of cones before the squirrels recover. The tree constructs a strategy to respond to how the squirrel population responds to the tree. A constant cycle. Although I do not know the specific numbers of this cycle, because of the how long this process has been taking place, I would expect the spruce trees to be reacting to the game in the most optimal way.

Link: http://peninsulaclarion.com/outdoors/2014-08-14/refuge-notebook-spruce-mast-events-feast-or-famine

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