Table 1.

Empirical challenges associated with fitting total dispersal kernels, novel approaches to resolve the challenges and case studies demonstrating how this approach has been used to fit dispersal kernels or highlighting technology that could be used to study seed dispersal.

Challenge	Approaches	Example
Locating all possible parent plants	Remote sensing	Baldeck et al. (2015), Andrew and Ustin (2010)
Linking dispersed seeds to parent plants	Genetic parentage analysis of seeds, chemical fingerprints, nitrogen or gamma isotopes	Jordano et al. (2007), Lesiak et al. (2015), Herrmann et al. (2016), Vander Wall (1992)
Locating all possible dispersal vectors	Frugivory observations, faecal samples	Jansen et al. (2014)
Linking dispersed seeds to dispersal vector	Genetic analysis of scat	Gonzalez-Varo et al. (2014)
Capturing movement of dispersal vectors	Improved transmitters	Wikelski (2010)
Estimating TDKs across a community	Functional traits	Mokany et al. (2014)
Linking movement to dispersal effectiveness	Genetic parentage analysis of seedlings	Moran and Clark (2011)