On the relationship between hypsodonty and feeding ecology in ungulate mammals, and its utility in palaeoecology

On the relationship between hypsodonty and feeding ecology in ungulate mammals, and its utility in palaeoecology - Damuth - 2011 - Biological Reviews - Wiley Online Library

Here we review the history and current state of our knowledge of the relationship between hypsodonty and ungulate ecology, and reassert the value of hypsodonty for our understanding of ungulate feeding behaviour. We also show how soil consumption, rather than the consumption of grass plants per se, may be the missing piece of the puzzle in understanding the observed correlation between diets, habitats, and hypsodonty in ungulates. Additionally, we show how hypsodonty may impact life-history strategies, and resolve some controversies regarding the relevance of hypsodonty to the prediction of the diets of extinct species.

Genomic DNA Sequences from Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth Reveal Deep Speciation of Forest and Savanna Elephants

PLoS Biology: Genomic DNA Sequences from Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth Reveal Deep Speciation of Forest and Savanna Elephants: "To elucidate the history of living and extinct elephantids, we generated 39,763 bp of aligned nuclear DNA sequence across 375 loci for African savanna elephant, African forest elephant, Asian elephant, the extinct American mastodon, and the woolly mammoth. Our data establish that the Asian elephant is the closest living relative of the extinct mammoth in the nuclear genome, extending previous findings from mitochondrial DNA analyses. We also find that savanna and forest elephants, which some have argued are the same species, are as or more divergent in the nuclear genome as mammoths and Asian elephants, which are considered to be distinct genera, thus resolving a long-standing debate about the appropriate taxonomic classification of the African elephants. Finally, we document a much larger effective population size in forest elephants compared with the other elephantid taxa, likely reflecting species differences in ancient geographic structure and range and differences in life history traits such as variance in male reproductive success."

Another one bites the dust: faecal silica levels in large herbivores correlate with high-crowned teeth — Proceedings B

Another one bites the dust: faecal silica levels in large herbivores correlate with high-crowned teeth — Proceedings B: "Hypsodonty is usually linked to diet abrasiveness, either from siliceous phytoliths (monocotyledons) or from grit (dusty environments). In this study, faecal silica content was quantified as acid detergent insoluble ash and used as proxy for silica ingested by large African herbivores of different digestive types, feeding strategies and hypsodonty levels. Separate sample sets were used for the dry (n = 15 species) and wet (n = 13 species) season. Average faecal silica contents were 17–46 g kg⁻¹ dry matter (DM) for browsing and 52–163 g kg⁻¹ DM for grazing herbivores. "

Improving Food Security by Lester R. Brown

REVE - Regulación Eólica con Vehículos Eléctricos -: "From 1950 to 1990, world grainland productivity increased by 2.2 percent per year, but from 1990 until 2009 it went up by only 1.3 percent annually. Despite some impressive local advances, the global loss of momentum in expanding food production is forcing us to think more seriously about reducing demand by stabilizing population, moving down the food chain, and reducing the use of grain to fuel cars."

Behavioral response races, predator-prey shell gam... [Ecology. 2010] - PubMed result

Behavioral response races, predator-prey shell gam... [Ecology. 2010] - PubMed result: "The predator-prey shell game predicts random movement of prey across the landscape, whereas the behavioral response race and landscape of fear models predict that there should be a negative relationship between the spatial distribution of a predator and its behaviorally active prey. Additionally, prey have imperfect information on the whereabouts of their predator, which the predator should incorporate in its patch use strategy. I used a one-predator-one-prey system, puma (Puma concolor)-mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) to test the following predictions regarding predator-prey distribution and patch use by the predator. (1) Pumas will spend more time in high prey risk/low prey use habitat types, while deer will spend their time in low-risk habitats."

Ancient DNA reveals late survival of mammoth and horse in interior Alaska — PNAS

Ancient DNA reveals late survival of mammoth and horse in interior Alaska — PNAS: "recovery of ancient DNA from perennially frozen and securely dated sediments (sedaDNA). In such contexts, sedaDNA can reveal the molecular presence of species that appear absent in the macrofossil record. We show that woolly mammoth and horse persisted in interior Alaska until at least 10,500 yr BP, several thousands of years later than indicated from macrofossil surveys. These results contradict claims that Holocene survival of mammoths in Beringia was restricted to ecologically isolated high-latitude islands. More importantly, our finding that mammoth and horse overlapped with humans for several millennia in the region where people initially entered the Americas challenges theories that megafaunal extinction occurred within centuries of human arrival or were due to an extraterrestrial impact in the late Pleistocene."

Why the leopard got its spots: relating pattern development to ecology in felids — Proceedings B

Why the leopard got its spots: relating pattern development to ecology in felids — Proceedings B: "A complete explanation of the diversity of animal colour patterns requires an understanding of both the developmental mechanisms generating them and their adaptive value. However, only two previous studies, which involved computer-generated evolving prey, have attempted to make this link. This study examines variation in the camouflage patterns displayed on the flanks of many felids. After controlling for the effects of shared ancestry using a fully resolved molecular phylogeny, this study shows how phenotypes from plausible felid coat pattern generation mechanisms relate to ecology."

Black rhino numbers expand in Kenya

Black rhino numbers expand in Kenya - Story - World - 3 News: "The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is undertaking a major population study and relocation exercise at Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya's Rift Valley as rhino numbers there expand.
The park is crucial to Kenya's efforts to revive numbers of the endangered, but once plentiful, black rhino.
In addition to relocating some animals, the undertaking includes ear-notching, census and transmitter-fitting exercises, performed by officers from the elite force."

Costs and Benefits of Sociality Differ Between Female Guanacos Living in Contrasting Ecological Conditions - Marino - 2010 - Ethology - Wiley Online Library

Costs and Benefits of Sociality Differ Between Female Guanacos Living in Contrasting Ecological Conditions - Marino - 2010 - Ethology - Wiley Online Library: "According to current theory, anti-predator benefits promote group formation in open-dwelling ungulates. An inverse relationship between vigilance effort and group size has been documented frequently and thought to reflect the consequent decrease in perceived predation risk as group size increases. In contrast, competition costs are supposed to set the upper limit to the number of individuals that can forage together. As anti-predator behavior is no longer functional in the absence of predation and competition costs might be affected by resource distribution, the net benefit of aggregation will depend on the particular combination of predation risk and habitat structure experienced by the individual"

Move it or lose it? The ecological ethics of relocating species under climate change

ESA Online Journals - Move it or lose it? The ecological ethics of relocating species under climate change: "Managed relocation (also known as assisted colonization, assisted migration) is one of the more controversial proposals to emerge in the ecological community in recent years. A conservation strategy involving the translocation of species to novel ecosystems in anticipation of range shifts forced by climate change, managed relocation (MR) has divided many ecologists and conservationists, mostly because of concerns about the potential invasion risk of the relocated species in their new environments. While this is indeed an important consideration in any evaluation of MR, moving species across the landscape in response to predicted climate shifts also raises a number of larger and important ethical and policy challenges that need to be addressed."

Group dynamics of zebra and wildebeest in a woodland...

Group dynamics of zebra and wildebeest in a woodla... [PLoS One. 2010] - PubMed result: "Distribution patterns of wildebeest and zebra groups at the landscape level directly support the theoretical and empirical evidence from a range of taxa predicting that grouping is favored in open habitats and when predation risk is high. Group composition reflected species-specific social, physiological and foraging constraints, as well as the importance of predation risk. Avoidance of high resource open scrub habitat by females can lead to loss of foraging opportunities, which can be particularly costly in areas such as KGR, where this resource is limited. Thus, landscape-level grouping dynamics are species specific and particular to the composition of the group, arising from a tradeoff between maximizing resource selection and minimizing predation risk."

ESA Online Journals - Phylogeny and metabolic scaling in mammals

ESA Online Journals - Phylogeny and metabolic scaling in mammals: "The scaling of metabolic rates to body size is widely considered to be of great biological and ecological importance, and much attention has been devoted to determining its theoretical and empirical value. Most debate centers on whether the underlying power law describing metabolic rates is 2/3 (as predicted by scaling of surface area/volume relationships) or 3/4 (“Kleiber's law”). Although recent evidence suggests that empirically derived exponents vary among clades with radically different metabolic strategies, such as ectotherms and endotherms, models, such as the metabolic theory of ecology, depend on the assumption that there is at least a predominant, if not universal, metabolic scaling exponent. Most analyses claimed to support the predictions of general models, however, failed to control for phylogeny."

IUCN - Antelope Specialist Group

IUCN - Antelope Specialist Group: "IUCN/SSC Antelope Specialist Group (ASG). ASG is one of more than 120 Specialist Groups that are part of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
ASG is the world's leading body of scientific and practical expertise on the status and conservation of all antelope species. It is a global network of specialists concerned with the conservation, monitoring, management, and study of antelopes.
The overall aim of ASG is to promote the long-term conservation of antelopes and their habitats worldwide, and the recovery or restoration of antelope species, populations and communities where feasible."

Diplomacy on dangerous ground: Aristocratic hunts in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nepal

Abstract

Aristocratic hunts in nineteenth and twentieth century in Nepal which yielded valuable products for the two aristocratic Gorkha families, the Ranas and the Shahs of Nepal. The Ranas and Shahs eliminated troublesome animals which ate crops and livestock, and more generally a source of legitimacy for the aristocratic class. Aristocratic hunting in Nepal dates from the very beginning of the Gorkha state. Tiger was from the start the most highly-prized big game animal. The technique used to hunt rhinoceros, leopard, wild boar, bear and water buffalo was a little different. Hunting tigers, rhinoceros and other large game animals was undoubtedly one of the most exciting and exhilarating activities open to the aristocrats of Nepal, and provided the Ranas and Shahs with a welcome respite from the routines and pressures of administrative life in Kathmandu. The big game hunts in which Nepalese and British participated were almost always exciting, dangerous and ultimately successful affairs.

Scopus preview - Scopus - Document details

Scopus preview - Scopus - Document details

 

The retention of ingesta in the digestive tract is a major characteristic of herbivorous animals. We measured particle and fluid mean retention times (MRT) in 13 lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) and 5 Malayan tapirs (Tapirus indicus) from five zoological institutions on their usual zoo diet and 2 lowland and 4 Malayan tapirs additionally on roughage-only diets (total n of trials = 24) with cobalt-EDTA as fluid and chromium-mordanted fibre (< 2. mm) as particle markers. MRT for fluid and particles averaged 42 ± 16. h and 55 ± 18. h in lowland and 40 ± 13. h and 56 ± 14. h in Malayan tapirs. In a General Linear Model, neither Tapir species, body mass or diet (characterised by the proportion of roughage) was significantly related to MRT, but dry matter intake was, with a steep decline in MRT with higher intake levels. Compared to other hindgut fermenters, tapirs have a low defecation frequency, which might be linked to their comparatively low food intake. Their gastrointestinal capacity (in dry matter: 1.63 ± 0.63% of body mass) is similar to that calculated for horses. A comparison of the difference in fluid and particle MRT in large hindgut fermenters (horses, rhinoceroses, elephants, and the tapirs of this study) shows that longer absolute particle MRT are linked to shorter relative fluid MRT, possibly indicating a more thorough 'washing' of particulate ingesta with digestive fluids at longer particle MRT. The only outlier to this general pattern, with an exceptionally high difference between fluid and particle MRT, indicating a particularly efficient ingesta washing, is the white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum). If possible, results of this study should be compared to findings in tapirs on natural diets

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SpringerLink - Conservation Genetics, Volume 11, Number 3

Molecular sexing of African rhinoceros
Peppin, L., McEwing, R., Ogden, R., Hermes, R., Harper, C., Guthrie, A., Carvalho, G.R.
Conservation Genetics
Abstract
We report the development of a fast and reliable PCR-based method for sex identification of African Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) that could easily be incorporated into fluorescent short tandem repeat (STR) profiling. A single primer pair, consisting of a fluorescently labelled forward primer and an unlabelled reverse primer, is used to co-amplify homologous fragments of a zinc finger (ZF) protein intron which exhibits size polymorphism between the X and Y chromosomes. In both species, the amplified ZFX and ZFY amplicons differ in size by 7 bp and can thus be differentiated by capillary electrophoresis. Blood, tissue, horn, and faecal samples were correctly sexed using this method. Cross species testing also demonstrated that this method could be used to sex Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) samples

SpringerLink - Conservation Genetics, Volume 11, Number 3

Extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) in Eurasia: Review of chronological and environmental issues - KUZMIN - 2009 - Boreas - Wiley Online Library

 

Kuzmin, Y. V. 2009: Extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) in Eurasia: Review of chronological and environmental issues. Boreas, 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2009.00122.x. ISSN 0300-9483.

The current evidence for date and environmental preferences of the extinction of two middle–late Pleistocene megafaunal species, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blum.) and woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis Blum.), is presented in this review. It is suggested that extinction of these large herbivores in Eurasia was closely related to landscape changes near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary (c. 12 000–9000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years ago, yr BP), mainly involving the widespread forest formations in the temperate and arctic regions of northern Eurasia and the loss of grasslands crucial to the existence of woolly mammoth and rhinoceros. However, some woolly mammoth populations survived well into the Holocene (up to c. 3700 yr BP), showing that the process of final extinction was fairly complex, with delays in some regions of up to several millennia. The possible role of Palaeolithic humans in the extinction of Late Pleistocene megafauna is also considered.

Extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) in Eurasia: Review of chronological and environmental issues - KUZMIN - 2009 - Boreas - Wiley Online Library

The relationship between forage cell wall content and voluntary food intake in mammalian herbivores - MEYER - 2010 - Mammal Review - Wiley Online Library

The relationship between forage cell wall content and voluntary food intake in mammalian herbivores - MEYER - 2010 - Mammal Review - Wiley Online Library: "We suggest that a colonic separation mechanism coupled with coprophagy, in order to minimize metabolic faecal losses, is necessary below a body size threshold where an anticipatory strategy (living off body reserves, migration) is not feasible. Future studies aimed at investigating fine-scale differences, for example between equids and bovids, should focus on non-domesticated species."

HOT SPOTS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY DESCENDED FROM MULT... [Evolution. 2010] - PubMed result

HOT SPOTS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY DESCENDED FROM MULT... [Evolution. 2010] - PubMed result: "ABSTRACT Species that inhabit naturally fragmented environments are expected to be spatially structured and exhibit reduced genetic diversity at the periphery of their range. Patterns of differentiation may also reflect historical processes such as recolonization from glacial refugia. We examined the relative importance of these factors in shaping the spatial patterns of genetic differentiation across the range of an alpine specialist, the North American mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus). Contrary to fossil evidence which suggests a single southern refugium, we detected evidence for additional refugia in northern British Columbia and the Alaskan coast using both mitochondrial and microsatellite DNA. A core area of elevated genetic diversity characterized both regions, and molecular dating suggested a recent Pleistocene split was followed by demographic expansion."

Shelter Competition, Caveman, Giant Cave Bear Extinction | Megafauna, Humanity-Caused Extinction | LiveScience

Shelter Competition, Caveman, Giant Cave Bear Extinction | Megafauna, Humanity-Caused Extinction | LiveScience: "Giant cave bears thought to have once dined on each other might have been driven to extinction by the advance of humanity, scientists now suggest."