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What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals
Determining herbage intake is pivotal for studies on grazing ecology. Direct observation of animals allows describing the interactions of animals with the pastoral environment along the complex grazing process. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the reliability of the continuous bite monit...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34306618 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7477 |
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author | Soares Bolzan, Anderson Michel Szymczak, Leonardo S. Nadin, Laura Bonnet, Olivier Jean F. Wallau, Marcelo O. de Moraes, Anibal Moraes, Renata F. Monteiro, Alda L. G. Carvalho, Paulo C. F. |
author_facet | Soares Bolzan, Anderson Michel Szymczak, Leonardo S. Nadin, Laura Bonnet, Olivier Jean F. Wallau, Marcelo O. de Moraes, Anibal Moraes, Renata F. Monteiro, Alda L. G. Carvalho, Paulo C. F. |
author_sort | Soares Bolzan, Anderson Michel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Determining herbage intake is pivotal for studies on grazing ecology. Direct observation of animals allows describing the interactions of animals with the pastoral environment along the complex grazing process. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the reliability of the continuous bite monitoring (CBM) method in determining herbage intake in grazing sheep compared to the standard double‐weighing technique method during 45‐min feeding bouts; evaluate the degree of agreement between the two techniques; and to test the effect of different potential sources of variation on the reliability of the CBM. The CBM method has been used to describe the intake behavior of grazing herbivores. In this study, we evaluated a new approach to this method, that is, whether it is a good proxy for determining the intake of grazing animals. Three experiments with grazing sheep were carried out in which we tested for different sources of variations, such as the number of observers, level of detail of bite coding grid, forage species, forage allowance, sward surface height heterogeneity, experiment site, and animal weight, to determine the short‐term intake rate (45 min). Observer (P(exp1) = 0.018, P(exp2) = 0.078, and P(exp3) = 0.006), sward surface height (P(exp2) < 0.001), total number of bites observed per grazing session (P(exp2) < 0.001 and P(exp3) < 0.001), and sward depletion (P(exp3) < 0.001) were found to affect the absolute error of intake estimation. The results showed a high correlation and agreement between the two methods in the three experiments, although intake was overestimation by CBM on experiments 2 and 3 (181.38 and 214.24 units, respectively). This outcome indicates the potential of CBM to determining forage intake with the benefit of a greater level of detail on foraging patterns and components of the diet. Furthermore, direct observation is not invasive nor disrupts natural animal behavior. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8293712 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82937122021-07-23 What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals Soares Bolzan, Anderson Michel Szymczak, Leonardo S. Nadin, Laura Bonnet, Olivier Jean F. Wallau, Marcelo O. de Moraes, Anibal Moraes, Renata F. Monteiro, Alda L. G. Carvalho, Paulo C. F. Ecol Evol Original Research Determining herbage intake is pivotal for studies on grazing ecology. Direct observation of animals allows describing the interactions of animals with the pastoral environment along the complex grazing process. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the reliability of the continuous bite monitoring (CBM) method in determining herbage intake in grazing sheep compared to the standard double‐weighing technique method during 45‐min feeding bouts; evaluate the degree of agreement between the two techniques; and to test the effect of different potential sources of variation on the reliability of the CBM. The CBM method has been used to describe the intake behavior of grazing herbivores. In this study, we evaluated a new approach to this method, that is, whether it is a good proxy for determining the intake of grazing animals. Three experiments with grazing sheep were carried out in which we tested for different sources of variations, such as the number of observers, level of detail of bite coding grid, forage species, forage allowance, sward surface height heterogeneity, experiment site, and animal weight, to determine the short‐term intake rate (45 min). Observer (P(exp1) = 0.018, P(exp2) = 0.078, and P(exp3) = 0.006), sward surface height (P(exp2) < 0.001), total number of bites observed per grazing session (P(exp2) < 0.001 and P(exp3) < 0.001), and sward depletion (P(exp3) < 0.001) were found to affect the absolute error of intake estimation. The results showed a high correlation and agreement between the two methods in the three experiments, although intake was overestimation by CBM on experiments 2 and 3 (181.38 and 214.24 units, respectively). This outcome indicates the potential of CBM to determining forage intake with the benefit of a greater level of detail on foraging patterns and components of the diet. Furthermore, direct observation is not invasive nor disrupts natural animal behavior. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-06-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8293712/ /pubmed/34306618 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7477 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Soares Bolzan, Anderson Michel Szymczak, Leonardo S. Nadin, Laura Bonnet, Olivier Jean F. Wallau, Marcelo O. de Moraes, Anibal Moraes, Renata F. Monteiro, Alda L. G. Carvalho, Paulo C. F. What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title | What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title_full | What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title_fullStr | What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title_full_unstemmed | What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title_short | What, how, and how much do herbivores eat? The Continuous Bite Monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
title_sort | what, how, and how much do herbivores eat? the continuous bite monitoring method for assessing forage intake of grazing animals |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34306618 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7477 |
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