Increased intake of tree forage by moose is associated with intake of crops rich in nonstructural carbohydrates.

Autor: Felton AM; Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, Sweden., Spitzer R; Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden., Raubenheimer D; Charles Perkins Centre and School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia., Hedwall PO; Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, Sweden., Felton A; Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, Sweden., Nichols RV; Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA., O'Connell BL; Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA., Malmsten J; Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden., Löfmarck E; School of Humanities, Örebro University School of Business, Örebro, Sweden., Wam HK; Division of Forestry and Forest Resources, NIBIO, Ås, Norway.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Ecology [Ecology] 2024 Sep; Vol. 105 (9), pp. e4377. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 24.
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.4377
Abstrakt: Animals representing a wide range of taxonomic groups are known to select specific food combinations to achieve a nutritionally balanced diet. The nutrient balancing hypothesis suggests that, when given the opportunity, animals select foods to achieve a particular target nutrient balance, and that balancing occurs between meals and between days. For wild ruminants who inhabit landscapes dominated by human land use, nutritionally imbalanced diets can result from ingesting agricultural crops rich in starch and sugar (nonstructural carbohydrates [NCs]), which can be provided to them by people as supplementary feeds. Here, we test the nutrient balancing hypothesis by assessing potential effects that the ingestion of such crops by Alces alces (moose) may have on forage intake. We predicted that moose compensate for an imbalanced intake of excess NC by selecting tree forage with macro-nutritional content better suited for their rumen microbiome during wintertime. We applied DNA metabarcoding to identify plants in fecal and rumen content from the same moose during winter in Sweden. We found that the concentration of NC-rich crops in feces predicted the presence of Picea abies (Norway spruce) in rumen samples. The finding is consistent with the prediction that moose use tree forage as a nutritionally complementary resource to balance their intake of NC-rich foods, and that they ingested P. abies in particular (normally a forage rarely eaten by moose) because it was the most readily available tree. Our finding sheds new light on the foraging behavior of a model species in herbivore ecology, and on how habitat alterations by humans may change the behavior of wildlife.
(© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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