Some plants evolve to withstand, thwart hungry deer

As any gardener or farmer knows, a hungry deer is rather indiscriminate in its produce consumption -- flowers, leaves and fruits of all kinds are fair game. To survive, some plants develop defenses to or toleration for the noshing deer teeth.

In a recent study of 26 populations of orange jewelweed -- a plant of the balsam family also known as spotted touch-me-not -- researchers found plants in areas commonly browsed by musk deer were more resilient to the threat of being eaten than were those in protected areas.

Scientists at Cornell University measured a plant's resiliency in terms of lifetime seed production -- how often a plant puts out new seeds, and how consistently and quickly those seeds take hold and grow.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Ecology, showed the lifetime seed production of plants from regions frequented by deer was only reduced 20 percent when subjected to hungry animals. The production of plants used to protection from the antlered predators, meanwhile, was reduced by 57 percent.

"Individuals in populations that were historically browsed were able to devote more resources to seed production," lead study author Laura Martin, a graduate student at Cornell, said in a press release. "The flowers last longer and there were more seeds per flower in the historically browsed plants, but there were the same number of flowers in browsed and protected plants."