On the adequacy of fruit removal as a proxy for fitness in studies of bird-mediated phenotypic selection.

Our results suggest that fruit removal can be reliably used as a proxy for total fitness when (1) there is a weak fruit number-seed number trade-off, (2) fruit crop size and fruit removal correlate positively, and (3) seed number variability does not largely exceed fruit number variability. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.