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We investigated the fate of seeds of five tree species hill cherry Prunus jamasakura, Korean hill cherry P. verecunda, Japanese bird cherry P. grayana, giant dogwood Swida controversa and crimson glory vine Vitis coignetiae in the faeces of the Asiatic black bear Ursus thibetanus in a temperate forest in central Japan. Clarifying the fate of seeds dispersed by endozoochorous seed dispersers will enhance assessments of their roles as primary seed dispersers. We established several experimental treatments in the field. Each faeces sample was covered by cages with different mesh sizes which limited accessibility by animals (NM: no mesh, SM: 1 mm mesh and MM: 10 mm mesh). We examined whether seed removal varied among tree species and between mesh‐size treatments from 2004 to 2007 (N = 625 samples). We set up an automatic camera trap 1.5 m above the ground at all NM treatments. In the NM …