Are cattle surrogate wildlife? Savanna plant community composition explained by total herbivory more than herbivore type

摘要: The widespread replacement of wild ungulate herbivores by domestic livestock in African savannas is composed two interrelated phenomena: (1) loss or reduction numbers individual wildlife species guilds and (2) addition to the system. Each can have important implications for plant community dynamics. Yet very few studies experimentally addressed individual, combined, potentially interactive effects vs. herbivore on herbaceous communities within a single Additionally, there little information about whether, which contexts, might functionally replace native or, alternatively, fundamentally different composition. Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment, has been running since 1995, six treatment combinations mega-herbivores, meso-herbivore wildlife, cattle. We sampled vegetation 25 times between 1999 2013. used partial redundancy analysis linear mixed models assess treatments overall composition key species. Plant shifted directionally over time diverged from each other substantially was strongly related (R2  = 0.92) residual biomass, measure utilization. Addition any type (cattle, mega-herbivores) caused shift that proportional its removal biomass. These results suggest herbivory pressure, rather than complex interactions among types, main driver changes Individual species, however, did respond most either ungulates Although these considerable functional similarity suite (which included grazers, browsers, feeders) cattle (mostly grazers) with respect understory composition, responses demonstrate at plant-population-level impacts are not identical those diverse group herbivores.