Producing excessive quantities of fruits and seeds in mast seeding years may over-satiate seed predators to the point that a small proportion of seeds can escape consumption, while a lack of seed production keeps predator populations low in the intervening years.
In mast seeding years, an abundance of fruits and seeds can lead to over-stimulation of seed predators, resulting in some seeds escaping predation. In non-mast seeding years with minimal seed production, predator populations remain low due to the scarcity of food.