Naive plant communities and individuals may initially suffer in the face of reintroduced megafauna: An experimental exploration of rewilding from an African savanna rangeland.

ABSTRACT: Excluding large native mammals is an inverse test of rewilding. A 25-year exclosure experiment in an African savanna rangeland offers insight into the potentials and pitfalls of the rewilding endeavor as they relate to the native plant community. A broad theme that has emerged from this research is that entire plant communities, as well as individual plants, adjust to the absence of herbivores in ways that can ill-prepare them for the return of these herbivores. Three lines of evidence suggest that these "naïve" individuals, populations, and communities are likely to initially suffer from herbivore rewilding. First, plots protected from wild herbivores for the past 25 years have developed rich diversity of woody plants that are absent from unfenced plots, and presumably would disappear upo

SUBMITTER: Young TP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8023473 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature