Plant seeds must travel far to maintain healthy ecosystems. Carried on the wind or in the fur and dung of animals, travelling seeds help cleared forest patches regrow and infuse clutches of rare species with diverse genes, making them more resistant to extinction.
Understanding how plants disperse is increasingly important in the face of the steadily growing human influence on natural habitats. As commerce and tourism have become globe-spanning enterprises, humans are purposely or unintentionally moving many plants or their seeds and cuttings at an unprecedented rate.
