Why elephant have trunks and giraffe long tongues: how plants shape large herbivore mouth morphology

We investigated whether mass and morphological spatial patterns in plants possibly induced the development of enlarged soft mouth parts in especially megaherbivores. We used power functions and geometric principles to explore allometric relationships of both morphological and foraging characteristic...

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Vydané v:Acta zoologica (Stockholm) Ročník 97; číslo 2; s. 246 - 254
Hlavní autori: Pretorius, Yolanda, de Boer, Willem F., Kortekaas, Kim, van Wijngaarden, Machiel, Grant, Rina C., Kohi, Edward M., Mwakiwa, Emmanuel, Slotow, Rob, Prins, Herbert H. T.
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.2016
Predmet:
allometry
Animal behavior
bite mass
Body size
Elephants
feeding station
Herbivores
instantaneous intake
Leaves
Leerstoelgroep Resource Ecology
Morphology
Mouth
PE&RC
Resource Ecology
ISSN:0001-7272, 1463-6395
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Popis
Shrnutí:We investigated whether mass and morphological spatial patterns in plants possibly induced the development of enlarged soft mouth parts in especially megaherbivores. We used power functions and geometric principles to explore allometric relationships of both morphological and foraging characteristics of mammalian herbivores in the South African savannah, covering a body size range of more than three orders magnitude. Our results show that, although intradental mouth volume scaled to a power slightly less than one to body mass, actual bite volume, as measured in the field, scaled to body mass with a factor closer to 1.75. However, when including the volume added to intradental mouth volume by soft mouth parts, such as tongue and lips (or trunks in elephant), mouth volume scaled linearly with actual bite volume and in a similar fashion as actual bite volume to body size. Bite mass and bite leaf mass scaled linearly with body size. We conclude that these scaling relationships indicate that large herbivores use their enlarged soft mouth parts to not only increase bite volume and thereby bite mass, but also select soft plant parts and thereby increase the leaf mass fraction per bite.
Bibliografia:istex:83F8C00F152DAE374F7B85FA42A56CE7A062A917
ark:/67375/WNG-L0RSKBTW-W
Dr Marie Luttig trust
ArticleID:AZO12121
WOTRO fund
Shell-SA
Suggested reviewers
pscoging@pan.uzulu.ac.za
janeckbb@ufs.ac.za
Prof. Peter Scogings – University of Zululand
Dr. Beanelri Janecke – University of the Free State
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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content type line 14
ISSN:0001-7272
1463-6395
DOI:10.1111/azo.12121