10.5061/DRYAD.2JM63XSK0
Veldhuis, Michiel
0000-0002-8186-5473
Leiden University
Kihwele, Emilian
University of Groningen
Mchomvu, Victor
Tanzania National Parks
Owen-Smith, Norman
University of the Witwatersrand
Hetem, Robyn
University of the Witwatersrand
Hutchinson, Matthew
Princeton University
Potter, Arjun
Princeton University
Olff, Han
University of Groningen
Data from: Quantifying water requirements of African ungulates through a
combination of functional traits
Dryad
dataset
2019
Physiological traits
water loss
surface water dependence
dietary water
dung moisture
urine osmolality
medullary thickness
dung pellet size
Evaporation
2019-12-02T00:00:00Z
2019-12-02T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1404
21935 bytes
4
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Climate and land use change modify surface water availability in African
savannas. Surface water is a key resource for both wildlife and livestock
and its spatial and temporal distribution is important for understanding
the composition of large herbivore assemblages in savannas. Yet, the
extent to which ungulate species differ in their water requirements
remains poorly quantified. Here, we infer the water requirements of 48
African ungulates by combining six different functional traits related to
physiological adaptations to reduce water loss, namely minimum dung
moisture, relative dung pellet size, relative surface area of the distal
colon, urine osmolality, relative medullary thickness and evaporation
rate. In addition, we investigated how these differences in water
requirements relate to differences in dietary water intake. We observed
strong correlations between traits related to water loss through dung,
urine and evaporation, suggesting that ungulates minimize water loss
through multiple pathways simultaneously, which suggests that each trait
can thus be used independently to predict water requirements. Furthermore,
we found that browsers and grazers had similar water requirements, but
browsers are expected to be less dependent on surface water because they
acquire more water through their diet. We conclude that these key
functional traits are a useful way to determine differences in water
requirements and an important tool for predicting changes in herbivore
community assembly resulting from changes in surface water availability.