Mast (botany) Mast seeding is defined as the highly variable production of fruit by a population. These intermittent pulses of food resources drive ecosystem-level functions and forest dynamics. The difference between a mast seeding year and a non-mast seeding year can be thousands of acorns, hickory nuts, beech nuts, etc. Mast seeding dominantly occurs in wind-pollinated tree species, but has also been observed in grasses and Dipterocarps. Masting, in the strict sense of the term, occurs only in monocarpic (or semelparous) species, whose members reproduce only once during their lifetime, then die. Hypothesis for the evolution of mast seeding can broadly be
Beech marten Pleistocene. Comparisons between fossil animals and their descendants indicate that the beech marten underwent a decrease in size beginning in the Würm period. Beech martens indigenous to the Aegean Islands represent a relic population with primitive Asiatic affinities. The skull of the beech marten suggests a higher adaptation than the pine marten toward hypercarnivory, as indicated by its smaller head, shorter snout and its narrower post-orbital constriction and lesser emphasis on cheek teeth. Selective pressures must have acted to increase the beech marten's bite force at the expense of gape. These traits probably acted on male beech martens as a