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Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage

Finding suitable forage patches in a heterogeneous landscape, where patches change dynamically both spatially and temporally could be challenging to large herbivores, especially if they have no a priori knowledge of the location of the patches. We tested whether three large grazing herbivores with a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Venter, Jan A., Prins, Herbert H.T., Mashanova, Alla, Slotow, Rob
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436584/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28533947
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3178
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author Venter, Jan A.
Prins, Herbert H.T.
Mashanova, Alla
Slotow, Rob
author_facet Venter, Jan A.
Prins, Herbert H.T.
Mashanova, Alla
Slotow, Rob
author_sort Venter, Jan A.
collection PubMed
description Finding suitable forage patches in a heterogeneous landscape, where patches change dynamically both spatially and temporally could be challenging to large herbivores, especially if they have no a priori knowledge of the location of the patches. We tested whether three large grazing herbivores with a variety of different traits improve their efficiency when foraging at a heterogeneous habitat patch scale by using visual cues to gain a priori knowledge about potential higher value foraging patches. For each species (zebra (Equus burchelli), red hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus subspecies camaa) and eland (Tragelaphus oryx)), we used step lengths and directionality of movement to infer whether they were using visual cues to find suitable forage patches at a habitat patch scale. Step lengths were significantly longer for all species when moving to non-visible patches than to visible patches, but all movements showed little directionality. Of the three species, zebra movements were the most directional. Red hartebeest had the shortest step lengths and zebra the longest. We conclude that these large grazing herbivores may not exclusively use visual cues when foraging at a habitat patch scale, but would rather adapt their movement behaviour, mainly step length, to the heterogeneity of the specific landscape.
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spelling pubmed-54365842017-05-22 Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage Venter, Jan A. Prins, Herbert H.T. Mashanova, Alla Slotow, Rob PeerJ Animal Behavior Finding suitable forage patches in a heterogeneous landscape, where patches change dynamically both spatially and temporally could be challenging to large herbivores, especially if they have no a priori knowledge of the location of the patches. We tested whether three large grazing herbivores with a variety of different traits improve their efficiency when foraging at a heterogeneous habitat patch scale by using visual cues to gain a priori knowledge about potential higher value foraging patches. For each species (zebra (Equus burchelli), red hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus subspecies camaa) and eland (Tragelaphus oryx)), we used step lengths and directionality of movement to infer whether they were using visual cues to find suitable forage patches at a habitat patch scale. Step lengths were significantly longer for all species when moving to non-visible patches than to visible patches, but all movements showed little directionality. Of the three species, zebra movements were the most directional. Red hartebeest had the shortest step lengths and zebra the longest. We conclude that these large grazing herbivores may not exclusively use visual cues when foraging at a habitat patch scale, but would rather adapt their movement behaviour, mainly step length, to the heterogeneity of the specific landscape. PeerJ Inc. 2017-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5436584/ /pubmed/28533947 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3178 Text en ©2017 Venter et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Venter, Jan A.
Prins, Herbert H.T.
Mashanova, Alla
Slotow, Rob
Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title_full Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title_fullStr Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title_full_unstemmed Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title_short Ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
title_sort ungulates rely less on visual cues, but more on adapting movement behaviour, when searching for forage
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436584/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28533947
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3178
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