Environmental context shapes the relationship between grass consumption and body size in African herbivore communities.

ABSTRACT: Though herbivore grass dependence has been shown to increase with body size across herbivore species, it is unclear whether this relationship holds at the community level. Here we evaluate whether grass consumption scales positively with body size within African large mammalian herbivore communities and how this relationship varies with environmental context. We used stable carbon isotope and community occurrence data to investigate how grass dependence scales with body size within 23 savanna herbivore communities throughout eastern and central Africa. We found that dietary grass fraction increased with body size for the majority of herbivore communities considered, especially when complete community data were available. However, the slope of this relationship varied, and rainfall seasonal

SUBMITTER: Abraham JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10867881 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature