Ecological engineering by a mega-grazer: White Rhino impacts on a south African savanna

Ecosystems

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 101-112

  Waldram, Matthew S ^a   Bond, William J ^a   Stock, William D ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN   (South Africa)

^b EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Ecosystem engineers; Facilitation; Fire; Grazing; Keystone species; Megaherbivores; Pleistocene extinctions; Savanna; White Rhino

Indexed keywords

ECOSYSTEM ENGINEERING; EXPERIMENTAL STUDY; EXTINCTION; GRASS; GRAZING; HERBIVORY; KEYSTONE SPECIES; PLEISTOCENE; SAVANNA; UNGULATE; WILDFIRE;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

MAMMALIA;

EID: 43149102054     PISSN: 14329840     EISSN: 14350629     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10021-007-9109-9     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Anon (2003) A preliminary assessment of the value of Landsat 7 ETM+ data following scan line corrector malfunction. NASA, Eros Data Centre, Sioux Falls
2. Archibald S, Bond WJ (2004) Grazer movements; spatial and temporal responses to burning in a tall-grass African savanna. Int J Wildland Fire 13:1-9.
3. Archibald S, Bond WJ, Stock WD, Fairbanks DHK (2005) Shaping the landscape: fire grazer interactions in an African Savanna. Ecol Appl 15:96-9.
4. Arsenault R, Owen-Smith NR (2002) Facilitation versus competition in grazing herbivore assemblages. Oikos 97:313-8.
5. Augustine DJ, McNaughton SJ (1998) Ungulate effects on the functional species composition of plant communities: herbivore selectivity and plant tolerance. J Wildl Manage 62:1165-83.
6. Balfour DA, Howison O (2001) Spatial and temporal variation in a mesic fire regime: responses to variation in annual rainfall. Afr J Range Forage Sci 19:43-51.
7. Barnes RFW (2001) How reliable are dung counts for estimating Elephant numbers? Afr J Ecol 39:1-9.
8. Bell RHV (1971) A grazing ecosystem in the Serengeti. Sci Am 224:86-93.
9. Bond WJ (2001) Keystone species-Hunting the snark? Science 292:63-4.
10. Bond WJ (2005) Large parts of the world are brown or black: a different view on the 'Green World' hypothesis. J Veg Sci 16:261-6.
11. Bond WJ, Balfour DA, Smythe K-A (2001) Acacia species turnover in space and time in an African savanna. J Biogeogr 28:117-28.
12. Bradstock R, Gill A, eds 2002. Flammable Australia: the fire regimes and biodiversity of a continent. Cambridge University Press, p 472
13. Bransby DI, Tainton NM (1977) The Disc Pasture meter: possible applications in grazing management. Proc Grassl Soc South Afr 12:115-8.
14. Brook BW, Bowman DMJS (2002) Explaining the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions; models, chronologies, and assumptions. Proc Natl Acad Sci 99:14624-7.
15. Brooks PM, Macdonald IAW (1983) The Hluhluwe Umfolozi Reserve: an ecological case history. In: Owen-Smith N, Ed. Management of large mammals in African conservation areas. Pretoria: Haum Educational Publishers. pp 51-77.
16. Burney DA, Flannery T (2005) Fifty millenia of catastrophic extinctions after human contact. Trends Ecol Evol 20:395-401.
17. Burney DA, Robinson GS, Burney LP (2003) Sporormiella and the late Holocene extinctions in Madagascar. Proc Natl Acad Sci 100:10800-5.
18. Choquenot D, Bowman DMJS (1998) Marsupial megafauna, aborigines and the overkill hypothesis: application of predator-prey models to the question of pleistocene extinction in Australia. Global Ecol Biogeogr Lett 7:167-80.
19. Congalton RG (2001) Accuracy assessment and validation of remotely sensed and other spatial information. Int J Wildland Fire 10:321-8.
20. Dinerstein E (2003) The return of the unicorns: the natural history and conservation of the greater one-horned Rhinoceros. New York: Columbia University Press.
21. Eltringham SK. 1970. Changes in the large mammal community of Mweya Peninsula, Rwenzori National Park, Uganda, following removal of Hippopotamus. In: IBP/UNESCO symposium on bioenergetics and tropical ecosystems. Kampala: Makererere University
22. Flannery T (1994) The future eaters. Sydney: Grove Press, p 432.
23. Fritz H, Duncan P, Gordon IJ, Illius AW (2002) Megaherbivores influence trophic guilds structure in African ungulate communities. Oecologia 131:620-5.
24. Fuhlendorf SD, Engle DM (2001) Restoring heterogeneity on rangelands: ecosystem management based on evolutionary grazing patterns. Bioscience 51:625-32.
25. Fuhlendorf SD, Engle DM (2004) Application of the fire-grazing interaction to restore a shifting mosaic on tallgrass prairie. J Appl Ecol 41:604-14.
26. Hudak AT, Brockett BH (2004b) Mapping fire scars in a southern African savanna using Landsat imagery. Int J Remote Sens 25:3231-43.
27. Hurlbert SH (1997) Functional importance vs. keystoneness: reformulating some questions in theoretical biology. Aust J Ecol 22:369-82.
28. Johnson CN, Prideaux GJ (2004) Extinctions of herbivorous mammals in the late Pleistocene of Australia in relation to their feeding ecology: no evidence for environmental change as a cause of extinction. Austral Ecol 29:553-7.
29. Jones CG, Lawton JH, Shachak M (1994) Organisms as ecosystem engineers. Oikos 69:373-86.
30. Krook K, Bond WJ, Hockey PAR (2007) The effect of grassland shifts on the avifauna of a South African savanna. Ostrich 78:271-9.
31. Laurie WA (1982) Behavioural ecology of the greater one-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). J Zool 196:307-41.
32. Lock JM (1972) The effects of hippopotamus grazing on grasslands. J Ecol 60:445-67.
33. Martin PS, Wright HE (1967) Pleistocene extinctions: the search for a cause. New Haven: Yale University Press.
34. McGarigal K, Cushman SA, Neel MC, Ene E. 2002. FRAGSTATS: spatial pattern analysis program for categorical maps. Computer software program produced by the authors at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Available at the following web site: www.umass.edu/landeco/research/fragstats/fragstats.html
35. McLaren BE, Peterson RO (1994) Wolves, Moose and tree rings on Isle Royale. Science 266:1555-8.
36. McNaughton SJ (1979) Grazing as an optimization process: grass-ungulate relationships in the Serengeti. Am Nat 113:691-703.
37. McNaughton SJ (1984) Grazing lawns: animals in herds, plant form, and coevolution. Am Nat 124:863-85.
38. McNaughton SJ (1985) Ecology of a grazing ecosystem: the Serengeti. Ecol Monogr 55:259-94.
39. Miller GH, Fogel ML, Magee JW, Gagan MK, Clarke SJ, Johnson BJ. 2005. Ecosystem collapase in Pleistocene Australia and a human role in megafaunal extinction. Science 309
40. Mladenoff DJ, White MA, Pastor J (1993) Comparing spatial pattern in unaltered old-growth and disturbed forest landscapes. Ecol Appl 3:294-306.
41. Olivier RCD, Laurie WA (1974) Habitat utilization by Hippopotamus in the Mara River. East Afr Wildl J 12:249-71.
42. Owen-Smith NR (1975) The social ethology of the White Rhinoceros Ceratotherium simum (Burchell1817). Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychol 38:337-84.
43. Owen-Smith NR (1987) Pleistocene extinctions: the pivotal role of megaherbivores. Paleobiology 13:351-62.
44. Owen-Smith NR (1988) Megaherbivores. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p 384.
45. Owen-Smith NR (1989) Megafaunal extinctions: the conservation message from 11,000 years B.P. Conserv Biol 3:405-12.
46. Perrin MR, Brereton-Stiles R (1999) Habitat use and feeding behaviour of the Buffalo and the White Rhinoceros in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve. S Afr J Wildl Res 29:72-80.
47. Player IC (1967) Translocation of White Rhinoceros in South Africa. Oryx 9:137-55.
48. Player IC (1972) The White Rhino saga. Glasgow: Collins. p 284.
49. Polis GA, Sear ALW, Huxel GR, Strong DR, Maron J (2000) When is a trophic cascade a trophic cascade? Trends Ecol Evol 15:473-5.
50. Power ME, Tilman D, Estes JA, Menge BA, Bond WJ, Mills SL, Daily G, Castilla JC, Lubchenco J, Paine RT (1996) Challenges in the quest for keystones. Bioscience 46:609-20.
51. Ripple WJ, Beschta RL (2004) Wolves and the ecology of fear: can predation risk structure ecosystems? Bioscience 54:755-66.
52. Robinson GS, Burney LP, Burney DA (2005) Landscape paleoecology and megafaunal extinction in southeastern New York state. Ecol Monogr 75:295-315.
53. Turner MG, Gardner RH, O'Neill RV (2001) Landscape ecology in theory and practice: pattern and process. New York: Springer Verlag.
54. Van de Koppel J, Prins HHT (1998) The importance of herbivore interactions for the dynamics of african savanna woodlands: an hypothesis. J Trop Ecol 14:566-76.
55. Vermiere LT, Mitchell RB, Fuhlendorf SD, Gillen RL (2004) Patch burning effects on grazing distribution. J Range Manage 57:248-52.
56. Verweij R, Verrelst J, Heitkonig IMA, Brunsting AMH (2006) Grazing lawns contribute to the subsistence of medium sized herbivores in dystrophic savannas. Oikos 114:108-16.
57. Vesey-Fitzgerald DF (1965) The utilization of natural pastures by wild animals in the Kukwa valley, Tanzania. East Afr Wildl J 3:38-49.
58. Whateley A, Porter RN (1983). The woody vegetation communities of the Hluhluwe-Corridor-Umfolozi game reserve complex. Bothalia 14:745-58.
59. White AM, Swaisgood RR, Czekala N (2007) Ranging patterns in White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum): implications for mating strategies. Anim Behav 74:349-56.