Substrate Utilization and Feeding Strategies of Mammals: Description and Classification/substraadi Kasutamise Ja Toitumise Strateegiad Imetajatel: Kirjeldamine Ning Klassifikatsioon (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dietary Characterization of Terrestrial Mammals
Understanding the feeding behaviour of the species that make up any ecosystem is essential for designing further research. Mammals have been studied intensively, but the criteria used for classifying their diets are far from being standardized. We built a database summarizing the dietary preferences of terrestrial mammals using published data regarding their stomach contents. We performed multivariate analyses in order to set up a standardized classification scheme. Ideally, food consumption percentages should be used instead of qualitative classifications. However, when highly detailed information is not available we propose classifying animals based on their main feeding resources. They should be classified as generalists when none of the feeding resources constitute over 50% of the diet. The term 'omnivore' should be avoided because it does not communicate all the complexity inherent to food choice. Moreover, the so-called omnivore diets actually involve several distinctive adaptations. Our dataset shows that terrestrial mammals are generally highly specialized and that some degree of food mixing may even be required for most species.
Oecologia Australis, 2015
Information on key biological traits is fundamental to understand complex ecological processes, and to develop mechanistic models of geographic distributions and community structure based on functional attributes. These ideas were the main motivation behind pioneer studies on food habits, diet selection, and ecophysiology of small mammals coordinated by Dr. Rui Cerqueira at the Laboratório de Vertebrados (LABVERT) of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Here we review his research program and his most important contributions on diet selection and water balance, which were studied to understand community structure, biogeography, and species distribution. Studies of diet selection varied from fecal content analyzes to comparative morphometric and anatomical studies of digestive organs, and its relations to diet digestibility. One of the main contributions was the development of a method to experimentally establish diet selection and food preference in laboratory. Previously, most Neotropical marsupials were simply described as omnivorous, but using this method it was possible to detect that species are distributed along a gradient of nutrient and food consumption, from frugivory to carnivory. A study of the water balance and urine concentration by the marsupial Philander frenatus supported the hypothesis that it is dependent on mesic habitats because of its limited ability to concentrate urine. This study also set the experimental apparatus used later in intra and interspecific comparisons, successfully determining local adaptation to different habitats in populations of the same species, and the physiological limitations of different species to occupy more xeric habitats. The experiments to determine diet selection and water balance by small mammals allowed unique inferences on intrinsic characteristics of populations and species, important aspects of their fundamental niche. They also provided the basis to characterize the function that these species may provide in communities and ecosystems.
Seasonal Water, Energy and Food Use by Free-Living, Arid-Habitat Mammals
Australian Journal of Zoology, 1994
Field metabolic rates (FMRs) of 61 species of mammals, as measured with doubly labelled water, range from 29 kJ day-l (0·34 W) in pipistrel bats to 49 MJ day-l (570 W) in northern elephant seals, which is a range of 1678 times. Most of this variation is due to differences in body mass; the leastsquares, log-log regression of mammalian FMR on body mass (kJ day-l = 5·27 gO.723)has a coefficient of determination (r2) of 0·961, indicating that variation in log(body mass) accounts for 96% of variation in 10g(FMR). The scaling of FMR in marsupials (kJ day-l = 10·83 gO.S82,17 species) differs significantly from that in eutherian mammals (kJ day-l = 4·63 gO.762, 44 species), and the respective r2-values (0·978 and 0·972) indicate that these taxonomic infraclasses explain another 1% of variation in 10g(FMR). After adjusting for mass and infraclass effects, residual variation is still substantial (2·S-fold among marsupials and 6·fold among eutherians). What accounts for this variation? Neither taxonomic order (or family within the Marsupialia), diet category (e.g. herbivore, carnivore), nor habitat (e.g. marine, tundra) explained much residual variation, except that desertdwelling eutherians had significantly lower FMRs than expected for eutherians of their mass. The failure of taxonomic and ecological categories to account for residual variation may be due, in part, to small sample sizes and skewed distributions of these categories along the mass axis, but it seems likely that other sources of variation, such as season, sex, age, ambient temperature, daily behaviour pattern and food availability may have large effects on FMR that are not accounted for in this analysis.
Theoretical models of species coexistence between desert mammals have generally been based on a combination of food and microhabitat selection by granivorous rodents. Although these models are applicable in various deserts of the world, they cannot explain resource use by mammals in Neotropical deserts. The present study examines diet composition in a mammal assemblage in the Monte desert, Argentina. The results show that two main strategies are used by these mammals: medium-sized species (hystricognath rodents: Dolichotis patagonum, Lagostomus maximus, Microcavia australis and Galea musteloides; and an exotic lagomorph: Lepus europaeus) are herbivores, whereas small-sized species (a marsupial: Thylamys pusillus; and sigmodontine rodents: Graomys griseoflavus, Akodon molinae, Calomys musculinus, Eligmodontia typus) are omnivorous. Small mammals also show a tendency towards granivory (C. musculinus), insectivory (A. molinae and T. pusillus) and folivory (G. griseoflavus).
Sociedad Colombiana de Mastozoología, 2018
Mammalogy Notes -Notas Mastozoológicas es una revista científica bianual revisada por pares dedicada a la publicación de artículos y notas sobre historia natural de mamíferos. Editada y publicada por la Sociedad Colombiana de Mastozoología, busca llenar el vacío en publicaciones seriadas que publiquen notas breves y observaciones sobre la distribución e historia natural de mamíferos. Notas mastozoológicas recibe manuscritos en inglés y español durante todo el año. Toda contribución debe ser enviada a notas_mastozoologia@gmail.com. A continuación, se indica el formato de las contribuciones. Los contenidos, ideas u opiniones en los artículos o secciones de esta revista son responsabilidad de los autores y no reflejan necesariamente la opinión de Mammalogy Notes ni de la Sociedad Colombiana de Mastozoología. Se permite la reproducción parcial o total de la información aquí publicada, siempre y cuando se nombre la fuente y se utilice sin fines de lucro.
Average daily metabolic rate of rodents: habitat and dietary comparisons
Functional Ecology, 1998
Average daily metabolic rate (ADMR), the metabolizable energy intake required by a caged animal to maintain constant body energy content, includes the basal metabolic rate (BMR) and the heat increment of feeding for maintenance (HIF m ). Therefore, when an animal is in energy balance, ADMR can be expressed as:
The Ecological Role of the Mammalian Mesocarnivore
Large mammalian carnivores are ecologically important because relatively few individuals can cause strong predation-driven direct effects or feardriven indirect effects that can ripple through communities and, ultimately, influence ecosystem structure and function. Most mammalian carnivores are not large, however, but are small to midsized species collectively termed "mesocarnivores." Mesocarnivores are more numerous and more diverse than larger carnivores, and often reside in closer proximity to humans, yet we know little about how they influence communities and ecosystems. In this article we review the ecological role of the mesocarnivore and present examples where mesocarnivores drive community structure and function in roles similar to, or altogether different from, their larger brethren. Together, these examples substantiate the need for an assessment of the ecological role of mammalian carnivores beyond an examination of only the largest species. In particular, we emphasize the need to study the trophic penetrance of mesocarnivores and examine how ecological context modulates their functional role. ) is an associate professor and a wildlife ecologist in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Ecology at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. His interests focus on how factors such as predation, parasitism, climate, and anthropogenic forces influence the behavior, demography, and genetic structure of carnivores and their prey. Matthew E. Gompper is a wildlife disease ecologist and mammalian carnivore biologist in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he studies the behavioral, population, and community ecology of carnivores and uses carnivores as model organisms to examine parasite-host interactions. Blaire Van Valkenburgh is a paleobiologist and functional morphologist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She uses the tools of biomechanics to explore the effects of competition, prey diversity, and environment on predator morphologies in past and present communities.
Oecologia Australis, 2018
Space and diet are frequently considered the two most important dimensions of an organism niche, but in tropical forests, these two dimensions are associated, with fruits more accessible in the canopy and upper strata of the forest, and arthropods more abundant in the forest litter. This constitutes a genuine macroecological pattern, potentially common to all tropical forests. We tested the existence of this trade-off between frugivory-insectivory in the vertical strata, and if it results from feeding specializations, using didelphid marsupials as a model group. We compared nine species, representing different lineages, which differ in diet and use of the forest strata, using phylogenetically independent contrasts. We classified species according to their use of the vertical strata into four categories based on the literature (terrestrialsemiaquatic, terrestrial-understory, underestory-subcanopy-canopy, and canopy only). Diet was analyzed by the proportion of nutrients (carbohydrates, fibers, proteins and lipids) in a cafeteria food preference experiment: more frugivorous diets have higher carbohydrate and fiber content, whereas more carnivorous and insectivorous diets have higher protein and lipid content. Along the phylogeny, increases in use of the vertical strata were significantly associated with increases in carbohydrate and fiber contents, and reductions in lipid content. Levels of protein content also reduced with increasing use of the vertical strata, but this association was not significant. The macroecological pattern of increasing frugivory with use of the upper strata is supported by the results for didelphid marsupials, which also indicate specialization is a mechanism involved. The contribution of didelphid marsupials to the ecosystem process of frugivory and seed dispersal is performed by a subset of species, despite being broadly described as omnivorous. Future studies should evaluate this macroecological pattern in more specialized taxonomic groups that vary in the use of the vertical strata, and if specialization is the general mechanism involved.