Rolling pits of Hartmann’s mountain zebra (<i>Zebra equus hartmannae</i>) increase vegetation diversity and landscape heterogeneity in the Pre‐Namib

Wagner, Thomas C.; Uiseb, Kenneth; Fischer, Christina

doi:10.1002/ece3.7983

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…Foraging pits and mounds also result from other animal disturbances such as those constructed when animals create shelter (e.g. hip holes and resting forms [16,17]).…”

Section: Soil Disturbance Enhances Biodiversity and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rewilding soil-disturbing vertebrates to rehabilitate degraded landscapes: benefits and risks

Eldridge

Soliveres

2023

Biol. Lett.

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Soil-disturbing animals are common globally and play important roles in creating and maintaining healthy functional soils and landscapes. Yet many of these animals are threatened or locally extinct due to habitat loss, predation by non-native animals or poaching and poisoning. Some reintroduction and rewilding programmes have as their core aims to increase animal populations and reinstate processes that have been lost due to their extirpation. Here we use a meta-analytical approach to review the effects of soil-disturbing vertebrates on ecosystem processes, and advance the argument that they can be used to rehabilitate degraded ecosystems by altering mainly composition and function, but with fewer positive effects on structure. We describe four examples where the loss or reintroduction of soil-disturbing vertebrates leads to ecosystem state changes and highlight the role of spatial scale, covarying management changes, and species co-occurrence in modulating their effects. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using soil-disturbing vertebrates over mechanized engineering approaches such as pitting and furrowing, considering some advantages to include more self-sustainable and heterogeneous disturbances, creation of new habitats and added recreational values. Finally, we identify key knowledge gaps in our understanding of the use of soil-disturbing vertebrates for rehabilitating degraded ecosystems.

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“…Foraging pits and mounds also result from other animal disturbances such as those constructed when animals create shelter (e.g. hip holes and resting forms [16,17]).…”

Section: Soil Disturbance Enhances Biodiversity and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rewilding soil-disturbing vertebrates to rehabilitate degraded landscapes: benefits and risks

Eldridge

Soliveres

2023

Biol. Lett.

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“…Here we decided to assign arthropod taxa including species with different feeding behaviour (herbivores, omnivores and predators) to omnivores (cf. 33 ) due to limitations in (taxonomic) knowledge 18 and logistic constrains.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the use of those taxonomic levels has been successfully applied studying effects of environmental changes on arthropod communities in arid and semi-arid areas 31 , 32 . In case a taxon consisted of species with either herbivorous, omnivorous and/ or predatory feeding preference, such as beetles or true bugs the group was assigned to omnivores 33 . Ants were considered separately due to their behaviour as predators, scavengers, and indirect herbivores 18 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal and temporal patterns of rainfall shape arthropod community composition and multi-trophic interactions in an arid environment

Fischer

Gerstmeier

Wagner

2022

Sci Rep

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In arid and semi-arid ecosystems, rainfall and rainfall temporal distribution shape species communities and multi-trophic interactions. Whereas the relationship between climate change-induced decline of precipitation and plants is well know, there is little knowledge of these relationships with consumers, such as arthropods of different trophic levels. In a 6-year period we studied precipitation effects and microhabitat conditions on multi-trophic interactions of ground-dwelling arthropods in an arid savannah. We analysed the effects of seasonal rainfall, plant cover and soil texture on community composition and activity density of arthropods of different trophic levels and investigated the critical window of vegetation and occurrence arthropods in relation to rainfall. Our result show, that arthropod community composition was determined by seasonal rainfall and plant cover. Soil texture did not explain arthropod response sufficiently. Especially detritivorous arthropods were strongly affected by precipitation and can therefore serve as indicators of droughts. Further, multi-trophic interactions can better be explained by short-term rainfall pulses, rather than by seasonal patterns, with a window of seven days being most suitable to explain the influence of rainfall. Plant cover responded immediately after the rainfall, followed by herbivorous and predatory arthropods, and with a lag of 23 days omnivorous arthropods. This highlights the importance of short-term rain pulses for multi-trophic interactions among arthropods and emphasized the relevance of studying detailed precipitation effects for the arthropod diversity and ecosystem stability in arid ecosystems.

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Understanding spatio-temporal complexity of vegetation using drones, what could we improve?

Müllerová,

Kent,

Brůna

et al. 2025

Journal of Environmental Management

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Rolling pits of Hartmann’s mountain zebra (Zebra equus hartmannae) increase vegetation diversity and landscape heterogeneity in the Pre‐Namib

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 3 publications

References 70 publications

Rewilding soil-disturbing vertebrates to rehabilitate degraded landscapes: benefits and risks

Rewilding soil-disturbing vertebrates to rehabilitate degraded landscapes: benefits and risks

Seasonal and temporal patterns of rainfall shape arthropod community composition and multi-trophic interactions in an arid environment

Understanding spatio-temporal complexity of vegetation using drones, what could we improve?

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