Conservation lessons from large‐mammal manipulations in East African savannas: the KLEE, UHURU, and GLADE experiments

Goheen, Jacob R.; Augustine, David J.; Veblen, Kari E.; Kimuyu, Duncan M.; Palmer, Todd M.; Porensky, Lauren M.; Pringle, Robert M.; Ratnam, Jayashree; Riginos, Corinna; Sankaran, Mahesh; Ford, Adam T.; Hassan, Abdikadir A.; Jakopak, Rhiannon P.; Kartzinel, Tyler R.; Kurukura, Samson; Louthan, Allison M.; Odadi, Wilfred O.; Otieno, Tobias O.; Wambua, Alois M.; Young, Hillary S.; Young, Truman P.

doi:10.1111/nyas.13848

Cited by 67 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 111 publications

(271 reference statements)

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“…The social-network hypothesis posits that physical proximity and demographic similarity constrain foraging opportunities and enhance microorganism transmission, thereby homogenizing diets and microbiomes (15,30). These homogenizing influences may act strongly on livestock populations, which tend to have biased sex ratios, even age distributions, and relatively dense feeding and sleeping aggregations (31). Finally, optimal foraging theory posits that animals should minimize energetic costs while maximizing food intake (32).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation of diet and gut microbiome in African megafauna

Kartzinel

Hsing

Musili

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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A major challenge in biology is to understand how phylogeny, diet, and environment shape the mammalian gut microbiome. Yet most studies of nonhuman microbiomes have relied on relatively coarse dietary categorizations and have focused either on individual wild populations or on captive animals that are sheltered from environmental pressures, which may obscure the effects of dietary and environmental variation on microbiome composition in diverse natural communities. We analyzed plant and bacterial DNA in fecal samples from an assemblage of 33 sympatric large-herbivore species (27 native, 6 domesticated) in a semiarid East African savanna, which enabled high-resolution assessment of seasonal variation in both diet and microbiome composition. Phylogenetic relatedness strongly predicted microbiome composition (r = 0.91) and was weakly but significantly correlated with diet composition (r = 0.20). Dietary diversity did not significantly predict microbiome diversity across species or within any species except kudu; however, diet composition was significantly correlated with microbiome composition both across and within most species. We found a spectrum of seasonal sensitivity at the diet−microbiome nexus: Seasonal changes in diet composition explained 25% of seasonal variation in microbiome composition across species. Species’ positions on (and deviations from) this spectrum were not obviously driven by phylogeny, body size, digestive strategy, or diet composition; however, domesticated species tended to exhibit greater diet−microbiome turnover than wildlife. Our results reveal marked differences in the influence of environment on the degree of diet−microbiome covariation in free-ranging African megafauna, and this variation is not well explained by canonical predictors of nutritional ecology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation of diet and gut microbiome in African megafauna

Kartzinel

Hsing

Musili

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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183

226

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“…The UHURU herbivore-exclusion experiment at MRC (Pringle 2012, Goheen et al 2013, 2018, Kartzinel et al 2014) comprises 36 1-ha fenced exclosure (with three sizeselective fencing configurations) and unfenced control plots at each of three sites across MRC. These three sites correspond with the largely non-overlapping ranges of three of our focal species: B. spinisepala (south), B. eranthemoides (central), and B. trispinosa (north).…”

Section: Study Site and Experimental Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Good neighbors make good defenses: associational refuges reduce defense investment in African savanna plants

Coverdale

Goheen²,

Palmer

et al. 2018

Ecology

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Intraspecific variation in plant defense phenotype is common and has wide-ranging ecological consequences. Yet prevailing theories of plant defense allocation, which primarily account for interspecific differences in defense phenotype, often fail to predict intraspecific patterns. Furthermore, although individual variation in defense phenotype is often attributed to ecological interactions, few general mechanisms have been proposed to explain the ubiquity of variable defense phenotype within species. Here, we show experimentally that associational refuges and induced resistance interact to create predictable intraspecific variation in defense phenotype in African savanna plants. Physically defended species from four families (Acanthaceae, Asparagaceae, Cactaceae, and Solanaceae) growing in close association with spinescent Acacia trees had 39-78% fewer spines and thorns than did isolated conspecifics. For a subset of these species, we used a series of manipulative experiments to show that this variability is maintained primarily by a reduction in induced responses among individuals that seldom experience mammalian herbivory, whether due to association with Acacia trees or to experimental herbivore exclusion. Unassociated plants incurred 4- to 16-fold more browsing damage than did associated individuals and increased spine density by 16-38% within one month following simulated browsing. In contrast, experimental clipping induced no net change in spine density among plants growing beneath Acacia canopies or inside long-term herbivore exclosures. Associated and unassociated individuals produced similar numbers of flowers and seeds, but seedling recruitment and survival were vastly greater in refuge habitats, suggesting a net fitness benefit of association. We conclude that plant-plant associations consistently decrease defense investment in this system by reducing both the frequency of herbivory and the intensity of induced responses, and that inducible responses enable plants to capitalize on such associations in heterogeneous environments. Given the prevalence of associational and induced defenses in plant communities worldwide, our results suggest a potentially general mechanism by which biotic interactions might predictably shape intraspecific variation in plant defense phenotype.

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“…; Figure 1). This ~200 km 2 unfenced conservancy and working ranch sustains diverse wildlife and domestic livestock species, and is the site of several long-term manipulative experiments that aim to elucidate the effects of herbivory and environmental change on semi-arid savanna ecosystems (Goheen et al, 2018). These studies include the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE) (Young, Okello, Kinyua, & Palmer, 1998), the Glade Legacies And Defaunation Experiment (Augustine & McNaughton, 2006), and the Ungulate Herbivory Under Rainfall Uncertainty experiment (UHURU) (Goheen et al, 2013;Kartzinel et al, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Plant DNA‐barcode library and community phylogeny for a semi‐arid East African savanna

Gill

Musili

Kurukura

et al. 2019

Molecular Ecology Resources

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Applications of DNA barcoding include identifying species, inferring ecological and evolutionary relationships between species, and DNA metabarcoding. These applications require reference libraries that are not yet available for many taxa and geographic regions. We collected, identified, and vouchered plant specimens from Mpala Research Center in Laikipia, Kenya, to develop an extensive DNA‐barcode library for a savanna ecosystem in equatorial East Africa. We amassed up to five DNA barcode markers (rbcL, matK, trnL‐F, trnH–psbA, and ITS) for 1,781 specimens representing up to 460 species (~92% of the known flora), increasing the number of plant DNA barcode records for Africa by ~9%. We evaluated the ability of these markers, singly and in combination, to delimit species by calculating intra‐ and interspecific genetic distances. We further estimated a plant community phylogeny and demonstrated its utility by testing if evolutionary relatedness could predict the tendency of members of the Mpala plant community to have or lack “barcode gaps”, defined as disparities between the maximum intra‐ and minimum interspecific genetic distances. We found barcode gaps for 72%–89% of taxa depending on the marker or markers used. With the exception of the markers rbcL and ITS, we found that evolutionary relatedness was an important predictor of barcode‐gap presence or absence for all of the markers in combination and for matK, trnL‐F, and trnH–psbA individually. This plant DNA barcode library and community phylogeny will be a valuable resource for future investigations.

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Conservation lessons from large‐mammal manipulations in East African savannas: the KLEE, UHURU, and GLADE experiments

Cited by 67 publications

References 111 publications

Covariation of diet and gut microbiome in African megafauna

Covariation of diet and gut microbiome in African megafauna

Good neighbors make good defenses: associational refuges reduce defense investment in African savanna plants

Plant DNA‐barcode library and community phylogeny for a semi‐arid East African savanna

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