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1 - Large herbivores across biomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2009

By
Hervé Fritz  and
Anne Loison
Edited by
Kjell Danell ,
Roger Bergström ,
Patrick Duncan  and
John Pastor
Hervé Fritz
Affiliation:
Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé
Anne Loison
Affiliation:
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Kjell Danell
Affiliation:
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Roger Bergström
Affiliation:
The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden
Patrick Duncan
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
John Pastor
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Duluth
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The vertebrate herbivores cover a very wide range of body sizes from a few tens of grams to more than a tonne. It is therefore necessary to define what we consider as large herbivores: Bourlière (1975) described the bimodal distribution of mammal body weights and defined large mammals as being those with an adult body weight of more than 5 kg. A more recent analysis on a restricted set of species from Africa and America (Lovegrove & Haines 2004) also showed a bimodal distribution for herbivore body weights, with a gap slightly before 10 kg, separating most micro‐herbivores (e.g. rodents, lagomorphs) from larger herbivores (mostly ungulates). Recently, however, large herbivores are often defined as those with body weight >2 kg (Ritchie & Olff 1999, Olff et al. 2002). We decided to keep the 2 kg threshold, which restricts large herbivores to mostly ungulates (sensu lato, i.e. Order Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla and including the Order Proboscidea) and to most herbivorous marsupials (sensu Fisher et al. 2001), all belonging to the Order Diprotodonta, and mainly to the Family Macropodidae. However we excluded from this synthesis the few large rodent species (e.g. capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) and the very large birds (e.g. ratites), which weigh over 2 kg. As it would take too long to show the patterns exhibited by ungulates as well as those from marsupials, we decided to comment on similarities and differences between these phylums, but to limit our main descriptions to ungulates.

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Large Herbivore Ecology, Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation , pp. 19 - 49
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Large herbivores across biomes
  • Edited by Kjell Danell, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Roger Bergström, The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden, Patrick Duncan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, John Pastor, University of Minnesota, Duluth
  • Book: Large Herbivore Ecology, Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation
  • Online publication: 16 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617461.003
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  • Large herbivores across biomes
  • Edited by Kjell Danell, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Roger Bergström, The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden, Patrick Duncan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, John Pastor, University of Minnesota, Duluth
  • Book: Large Herbivore Ecology, Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation
  • Online publication: 16 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617461.003
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  • Large herbivores across biomes
  • Edited by Kjell Danell, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Roger Bergström, The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden, Patrick Duncan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, John Pastor, University of Minnesota, Duluth
  • Book: Large Herbivore Ecology, Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation
  • Online publication: 16 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617461.003
Available formats
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