Scatter-hoarding rodents and marsupials: convergent evolution on diverging continents

Neotropical rainforests host a rich community of fruit-eating animals, among them neotropical scatter-hoarding rodents that bury seeds in soil. These animals perform an important community-building process because the seeds germinate and establish seedlings away from the parent plant. In three recent studies, researchers have demonstrated a comparable role for paleotropical rodents in southeast Asia. With the discovery that a frugivorous kangaroo behaves similarly to its neotropical rodent counterpart, a new level has been reached in our understanding of the evolution of tropical forests.