The Role of Individual Traits and Environmental Factors for Diet Composition of Sheep.

ABSTRACT: Large herbivore consumption of forage is known to affect vegetation composition and thereby ecosystem functions. It is thus important to understand how diet composition arises as a mixture of individual variation in preferences and environmental drivers of availability, but few studies have quantified both. Based on 10 years of data on diet composition by aid of microhistological analysis for sheep kept at high and low population density, we analysed how both individual traits (sex, age, body mass, litter size) linked to preference and environmental variation (density, climate proxies) linked to forage availability affected proportional intake of herbs (high quality/low availability) and Avenella flexuosa (lower quality/high availability). Environmental factors affecting current forage ava

SUBMITTER: Mysterud A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4701509 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature