Theobroma cacao beans, along with other agricultural products, were brought back to Spain at that time, but it seems the beverage made from cacao was introduced to the Spanish court in 1544 by Kekchi Maya nobles brought from the New World to Spain by Dominican friars to meet Prince Philip. Within a century, chocolate had spread to France, England and elsewhere in Western Europe. Demand for this beverage led the French to establish cacao plantations in the Caribbean, while Spain subsequently developed their cacao plantations in their Venezuelan and Philippine colonies (Bloom 1998, Coe 1996). A painting by Dutch Golden Age artist
Seed predation seed predators locate, consume, and disperse seeds. In many cases this relationship is dependent upon the type of seed predator (specialist vs. generalist) or the particular habitat in which the interaction is taking place. The role of seed predation on plant demography may be either detrimental or in particular cases actually beneficial to plant populations. The Janzen-Connell model concerns how seed density and survival respond to distance from the parent tree and differential rates of seed predation. Seed density is hypothesized to decrease as distance from the parent tree increases. Where seeds are most abundant under the parent tree, seed