Diets of mammalian herbivores in Australian arid, hilly shrublands: seasonal effects on overlap between euros (hill kangaroos), sheep and feral goats, and on dietary niche breadths and electivities

Foddering by Mongolian pastoralists is recorded in the stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopes of caprine dentinal collagen

“…Under free-range conditions, sheep preferentially graze while goats browse [9,25,26] and observation of BGC domestic goats and sheep feeding indicates that goats had a slightly higher incidence of browsing than sheep under summertime conditions. In this study, the lack of a significant difference in d 13 C values in dentin collagen between sheep and goat (both wild and domestic) likely reflects both the wide array of floral types available for consumption and the range in carbon isotopic values of the plants.…”

Sources of carbon isotope variation in kangaroo bone collagen and tooth enamel

“…By the time molar M4 is formed at over 2 years of age (Kirkpatrick, 1978), juvenile kangaroos are weaned and consuming a diet entirely of plants. Such a suckling effect is probable because a suckling juvenile occupies a higher trophic level than an adult herbivore, and there is a well documented decrease The crosses indicate estimates obtained from the literature (Kirkpatrick, 1965;Griffiths and Barker, 1966;Ealey and Main, 1967;Chippendale, 1968;Storr, 1968;Bailey et al, 1971;Low et al, 1973;Ellis et al, 1977;Dawson and Ellis, 1979;Taylor, 1980;Taylor, 1983;Algar, 1986;Barker, 1987;Croft, 1987;Jarman and Phillips, 1989;Dawson and Ellis, 1994;Edwards et al, 1995;Dawson and Ellis, 1996;Ramsey, 1996;Sprent and McArthur, 2002;Stirrat, 2002;Dawson et al, 2004). In cases where the authors did not provide a separate estimate for grasses, we used the estimate for monocotyledons.…”

Distinguishing sheep and goats using dental morphology and stable carbon isotopes in C4 grassland environments

“…Although the diets of both taxa can vary seasonally, the difference between browsing goats and grazing sheep remains clear. Preference for browse over grass in goats, and grazing in sheep, has been described for a variety of environments under semi-arid and tropical climates [11,14,28,32,33,35,36].…”