Final answer:
Tropical trees typically avoid self-fertilization to maintain genetic diversity, involving strategies such as different maturation times for reproductive parts and reliance on pollinators for cross-pollination. Perfect flowers and endozoochorous seed dispersal are common, further ensuring outcrossing.
Step-by-step explanation:
Do tropical trees commonly show self-fertilization? Generally, tropical trees are not known for self-fertilization. This is because self-fertilization decreases genetic diversity, and many tropical trees have evolved various mechanisms to encourage outcrossing and prevent self-fertilization.
For example, many tropical tree species possess flowers with both male and female parts, known as perfect flowers. These species have developed several strategies to avoid self-pollination, such as having male and female reproductive parts that mature at different times or employing biochemical and anatomical barriers. The fertilization process for an Angiosperm, which includes most tropical trees, is characterized by double fertilization and normally involves a pollinator such as an insect or a bird.
Additionally, there is extensive reliance on endozoochorous dispersal, where seeds are adapted to be disseminated through animal digestion. This further emphasizes the ecological role of cross-pollination and the need for genetic diversity provided by outcrossing, as seeds falling below the parent canopy often do not survive due to pests and pathogens.