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Leblanc, M.-A.; Duncan, P. |
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Can studies of cognitive abilities and of life in the wild really help us to understand equine learning? |
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2007 |
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Behavioural Processes |
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Behav. Process. |
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76 |
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49-52 |
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refbase @ user @ |
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621 |
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Grange, S.; Duncan, P. |
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Title |
Bottom-up and top-down processes in African ungulate communities: resources and predation acting on the relative abundance of zebra and grazing bovids |
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Journal Article |
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2006 |
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Ecography |
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29 |
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6 |
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899-907 |
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African ungulate populations appear to be limited principally by their food resources. Within ungulate communities, plains zebras coexist with grazing bovids of similar body size, but rarely are the dominant species. Given the highly effective nutritional strategy of the equids and the resistance of zebras to drought, this is unexpected and suggests that zebra populations may commonly be limited by other mechanisms. Long-term research in the Serengeti ecosystem and in the Kruger National Park suggests that zebra could be less sensitive to food shortage, and more sensitive to predation, than grazing bovids: if this is a general principle, then, at a larger scale, resource availability should have a weaker effect on the abundance of zebra than on grazing ruminants of similar body size (wildebeest and buffalo), and zebras should be relatively more abundant in ecosystems where predators are rare or absent. We test these expectations using data on 23 near-natural ecosystems in east and southern Africa. The abundance of wildebeest is more closely related to resources than is that of zebra; buffalo are intermediate. We show that hyena densities are closely correlated with those of lions, and use the abundance of lions as an index of predation by large predators. The numerical response of lions to increases in the abundance of their prey was linear for mesoherbivores, and apparently so for the three species alone. Finally, the abundance of zebra relative to grazing bovids is lower in ecosystems with high biomasses of lions. These results indicate that zebras may commonly be more sensitive to top-down processes than grazing bovids: the mechanism(s) have not been demonstrated, but predation could play a role. If it is true, then when numbers of the large mammalian predators decline, zebra populations should increase faster than buffalo and wildebeest. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Grange2006 |
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2313 |
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Duncan, P.; Foose, T. J.; Gordon, I. J.; Gakahu,C. G.; Lloyd, M. |
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Comparative nutrient extraction from forages by grazing bovids and equids: a test of the nutritional model of equid/bovid competition and coexistence |
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1990 |
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Oecologia |
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Oecologia |
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84 |
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3 |
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411-418 |
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Ruminant – Hind-gut fermenter – Intake – Digestion – Competition |
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Ruminants are unevenly distributed across the range of body sizes observed in herbivorous mammals; among extant East African species they predominate, in numbers and species richness, in the medium body sizes (10-600 kg). The small and the large species are all hind-gut fermenters. Some medium-sized hind-gut fermenters, equid perissodactyls, coexist with the grazing ruminants, principally bovid artiodactyls, in grassland ecosystems. These patterns have been explained by two complementary models based on differences between the digestive physiology of ruminants and hind-gut fermenters. The Demment and Van Soest (1985) model accounts for the absence of ruminants among the small and large species, while the Bell/Janis/Foose model accounts both for the predominance of ruminants, and their co-existence with equids among the medium-sized species (Bell 1971; Janis 1976; Foose 1982). The latter model assumes that the rumen is competitively superior to the hind-gut system on medium quality forages, and that hind-gut fermenters persist because of their ability to eat more, and thus to extract more nutrients per day from high fibre, low quality forages. Data presented here demonstrate that compared to similarly sized grazing ruminants (bovids), hind-gut fermenters (equids) have higher rates of food intake which more than compensate for their lesser ability to digest plant material. As a consequence equids extract more nutrients per day than bovids not only from low quality foods, but from the whole range of forages eaten by animals of this size. Neither of the current nutritional models, nor refinements of them satisfactorily explain the preponderance of the bovids among medium-sized ungulates; alternative hypotheses are presented. |
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from Professor Hans Klingels Equine Reference List |
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yes |
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1035 |
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