4.1 Size analysis of birds visiting Gumbo Limbo
It has been argued that a limiting factor as to whether a bird can feed
on a certain fruit relates to morphology and specifically the size of a
species’ bill (Wheelwright et al.1984, Moermond and Denslow 1985, Levy
1987, Jordano 1986, 2014, and Bender et al. 2018). Since Gumbo Limbo
fruits are encased in an outer shell the questions arise: Does the size
of a bird’s bill determine whether it can feed on this particular fruit,
and is it able to open its seed capsule and/or swallow the fruit inside?
To analyze this I divided the species visiting these trees into two
different categories of size: medium vs small (small being <15
cm), and arranged them in order of size (Garrigues and Dean 2014). These
results can be seen in Table 1.
Table 1. Birds Visiting Gumbo Limbo