Fecal nitrogen concentration as a nutritional quality indicator for European rabbit ecological studies.

ABSTRACT: Measuring the quality of the nutritional resources available to wild herbivores is critical to understanding trophic regulation processes. However, the direct assessment of dietary nutritional characteristics is usually difficult, which hampers monitoring nutritional constraints in natural populations. The feeding ecology of ruminant herbivores has been often assessed by analyzing fecal nitrogen (FN) concentrations, although this method has been less evaluated in other taxa. This study analyzed the suitability of FN as an indicator of ingesta quality in the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which is a keystone lagomorph species in Mediterranean ecosystems and of great conservation interest. Firstly, domestic O. cuniculus were used to evaluate under experimental conditions the accura

SUBMITTER: Gil-Jimenez E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4404320 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature