To get by in a changing climate, plants need animal poop to carry them to safety
As the climate gets hotter, plants could need to move to new habitats. But animals that eat their fruit and help spread the seeds are disappearing.
Evan Fricke knows exactly how long it takes, after a bird on the island of Saipan eats a piece of fruit, for it to come out the other end (Answer: as little as 10 minutes).
"There's always this poop angle to my research," says Fricke, an ecologist with Rice University. "PhD in bird poop basically."
Poop â or more specifically the digestion time
