Quantifying water requirements of African ungulates through a combination of functional traits
Emilian Kihwele,Emilian Kihwele,Victor Mchomvu,Norman Owen-Smith,Robyn S. Hetem,Matthew C. Hutchinson,Arjun B. Potter,Han Olff,Michiel P. Veldhuis,Michiel P. Veldhuis,Michiel P. Veldhuis +10 more
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TLDR
In this paper, the water requirements of 48 African ungulates were inferred by combining six different functional traits related to physiological adaptations to reduce water loss, namely minimum dung moisture, relative dung pellet size, relative surface area of the distal colon, urine osmolality, relative medullary thickness, and evaporation rate.Abstract:
Climate and land use change modify surface water availability in African savannas. Surface water is a key resource for both wildlife and livestock and its spatial and temporal distribution is important for understanding the composition of large herbivore assemblages in savannas. Yet, the extent to which ungulate species differ in their water requirements remains poorly quantified. Here, we infer the water requirements of 48 African ungulates by combining six different functional traits related to physiological adaptations to reduce water loss, namely minimum dung moisture, relative dung pellet size, relative surface area of the distal colon, urine osmolality, relative medullary thickness, and evaporation rate. In addition, we investigated how these differences in water requirements relate to differences in dietary water intake. We observed strong correlations between traits related to water loss through dung, urine and evaporation, suggesting that ungulates minimize water loss through multiple pathways simultaneously, which suggests that each trait can thus be used independently to predict water requirements. Furthermore, we found that browsers and grazers had similar water requirements, but browsers are expected to be less dependent on surface water because they acquire more water through their diet. We conclude that these key functional traits are a useful way to determine differences in water requirements and an important tool for predicting changes in herbivore community assembly resulting from changes in surface water availability.read more
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Expanded geographic distribution and dietary strategies of the earliest Oldowan hominins and Paranthropus
Thomas W. Plummer,James S. Oliver,Emma M. Finestone,Peter Ditchfield,Laura C. Bishop,Scott A. Blumenthal,Cristina Lemorini,Isabella Caricola,Shara E. Bailey,Andy I.R. Herries,Jennifer A. Parkinson,Elizabeth Whitfield,Fritz Hertel,Rahab Kinyanjui,T. Vincent,Youjuan Li,Julien Louys,Stephen R. Frost,David R. Braun,Jonathan Reeves,Emily D. G. Early,Blasto Onyango,Raquel Lamela-Lopez,Frances Forrest,Huaiyu He,Timothy Lane,Marine Frouin,Sébastien Nomade,E. P. Wilson,S. K. Bartilol,Nelson Kiprono Rotich,Richard Potts +31 more
TL;DR: The earliest known hominin tools from around 2.6 million years ago have been found to have been used to process diverse foods including megafauna and associated with Paranthropus from its onset as discussed by the authors .
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Upstream land-use negatively affects river flow dynamics in the Serengeti National Park
Emilian Kihwele,Emilian Kihwele,Michiel P. Veldhuis,Michiel P. Veldhuis,A. Loishooki,J.R. Hongoa,J.G.C. Hopcraft,Han Olff,Eric Wolanski +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantified the changes since the 1970s of river discharge dynamics and found that the baseflow recession period for the Mbalageti River has remained unchanged at 70 days, which is a natural system inside SNP.
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Mapping and assessing the impact of small-scale ephemeral water sources on wildlife in an African seasonal savannah
Robin Naidoo,Angela Brennan,Aurélie Shapiro,Piet Beytell,Ortwin Aschenborn,Pierre du Preez,J. Werner Kilian,Greg Stuart-Hill,Russell Taylor +8 more
TL;DR: The inclusion of ephemeral water into models of abundance and movement resulted in improved goodness of fit relative to those without water, and water impacts on abundance andmovement were among the strongest of all variables considered.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecological and behavioral mechanisms of density-dependent habitat expansion in a recovering African ungulate population
Justine A. Becker,Justine A. Becker,Matthew C. Hutchinson,Arjun B. Potter,Shinkyu Park,Jennifer A. Guyton,Kyler Abernathy,Victor F. Americo,Anagledis da Conceiçāo,Tyler R. Kartzinel,Luca Kuziel,Naomi Ehrich Leonard,Eli Lorenzi,Nuno C. Martins,Johan Pansu,Johan Pansu,Johan Pansu,William L. Scott,Maria K. Stahl,Kai R. Torrens,Marc Stalmans,Ryan A. Long,Robert M. Pringle +22 more
TL;DR: Becker et al. as mentioned in this paper showed that after years of unrestricted population growth, waterbuck have depleted food availability in their historically preferred floodplain habitat and have increasingly expanded into historically avoided savanna habitat.
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Functional traits of the world's late Quaternary large-bodied avian and mammalian herbivores.
Erick J. Lundgren,Simon D. Schowanek,John Rowan,Owen Middleton,Rasmus Ø. Pedersen,Arian D. Wallach,Daniel Ramp,Matthew A. Davis,Matthew A. Davis,Christopher J. Sandom,Jens-Christian Svenning +10 more
TL;DR: The HerbiTraits dataset as discussed by the authors provides a comprehensive functional trait dataset for all late Quaternary terrestrial avian and mammalian herbivores ≥ 10 kg (545 species) and includes key traits that influence how large-bodied birds interact with ecosystems, namely body mass, diet, fermentation type, habitat use, and limb morphology.
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