Sloth bears play a critical role in structuring India’s dry deciduous forests by dispersing viable seeds and influencing plant regeneration, reports contributor Sneha Mahale for Mongabay India. “Dry deciduous forests’ plant compositions are a function of sloth bear presence, movement, and dietary habits,” study co-author K.S. Gopi Sundar, an independent scientist, told Mongabay India. For the study,  the researchers surveyed the mountainous south-central Aravalli range in the western state of Rajasthan between November 2021 and July 2022. They analyzed 180 droppings or scats of sloth bears (Melursus ursinus)  and discovered that the bears’ diet shifted from plant-dominated in the winter to animal-dominated in the summer. In winter, ants appeared in more than 80% of the scats, whereas termites dominated summer samples. Among fruits, donkey berry (Grewia flavescens) was the most critical food source in both seasons, while Ziziphus nummularia was favored in winter and the golden shower tree (Cassia fistula) in summer. “The strong shift in diet was of great surprise,” said study co-author Utkarsh Prajapati, a senior project associate at the Wildlife Institute of India. “Previous studies on sloth bears in semi-arid regions have shown that they consume a lot of fruits during the summer.” Study co-author Vijay Kumar Koli  with the Department of Zoology at Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, said this seasonal change “showed that bears were highly adaptable, switching to foods that were more available.” To test whether bears help in seed dispersal, the researchers monitored the germination of eight plant species most important in the bears’…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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