Evolutionary dynamics of seed dispersal under global change: trait shifts, climate tracking, and plant-disperser reconfiguration

Seed dispersal is a key life-history process shaping plant fitness, population dynamics, community assembly, and species distributions. Global environmental change can modify dispersal by altering environmental conditions, landscape connectivity, dispersal vectors, and the selective pressures acting on plant populations. This narrative review synthesizes evidence on the ecological and evolutionary responses of seed dispersal to climate change, habitat fragmentation, biological invasions, and defaunation. We develop an integrative causal framework linking environmental change to dispersal-related trait variation, selection, propagule movement, establishment, and population redistribution, with feedbacks arising as redistributed populations encounter new ecological and selective environments. The review considers anemochory, hydrochory, zoochory, autochory, and anthropochory, highlighting human-mediated transport as a major pathway of propagule movement across disturbed landscapes and geographical barriers. It also distinguishes herbaceous from woody plants, emphasizing how generation time, reproductive turnover, seed traits, and dependence on dispersal vectors can influence the pace and direction of ecological and evolutionary responses. Evidence on climate-driven range shifts indicates that dispersal can facilitate colonization and local persistence but rarely guarantees climate tracking, because realized redistribution also depends on landscape permeability, disperser functionality, climatic directionality, and recruitment conditions. Changes in plant - disperser networks can further modify dispersal effectiveness and selection on plant traits, potentially generating eco-evolutionary feedbacks. However, empirical evidence linking multiple global change drivers to evolutionary changes in dispersal and reciprocal plant - disperser responses remains limited. We conclude that predicting plant persistence and redistribution requires an integrated framework that connects environmental drivers, plant life history, dispersal vectors, trait evolution, landscape structure, and establishment processes.