Question

What does the term Frugivorous mean?

Answer 1

Frugivore as we can know by the name that frugivorous means animals which can survive and thrive its adaptation on raw fruits and its succulents. Hence, the name frugivore is given. The animals eat fruits-like production of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. On an average $20\%$ of mammalian herbivores eat fruit.

Complete answer:
A frugivore is an animal which survives and thrives on fruit and plants other fruit like products, as we discussed earlier. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance and nutrition composition of fruits. Some animals like chimpanzees, orangutan is highly dependent on fruits for their survival and life existence. Frugivores get their benefit or hinder fruit-producing plants by either dispersing or destroying their seeds through digestion. When both the fruit-producing plant and the frugivore benefit by fruit eating behavior the interaction is called mutualism.
Birds are the main focus for frugivore research. Also, frugivores have economic importance on ecosystems. How- let us know that. Birds are a good source of seed dispersal and pollination factors. They help in reproduction of plants by acting as pollinating agents. And the extinction of these seed dispersing species can have adverse effects on ecosystems such as- seed removal, seed viability and plant establishment. So, there are various adverse effects of these species on the environment. Examples of seed-dispersing birds are the hornbill, the toucan, the aracari, the cotinga and some species of parrots.
Many frugivore animals and birds are found mostly in the temperate zone, and also in tropics. Many frugivores birds feed on fruits until their nesting season when they require protein rich insects into their diet. Some birds may also eat bitter berries such as juniper when alternative foods are scarce. In North America, red mulberry fruits are widely sought-after birds in spring and early summer as many as thirty-one species of birds recorded visiting a fruiting tree in Arkansas.
Mammals are considered frugivores as their twenty percent diet consists of fruits. One example of a mammalian frugivore is the maned wolf, which is found in South America.

Note:
We discussed frugivore animals, their adaptations and other factors. Let see some more examples like- fruit bats and gray-bellied night monkeys also known as the owl monkey. Sixty five percent of the diet of orangutans primarily eat fruit, along with young leaves, bark, flowers, honey, insects and vines. One of the preferred foods of orangutans is the fruit of the durian tree which tastes like sweet custard. They discard the seed and eat the flesh and this acts as a seed dispersion.