1. Through their effects on plant communities, herbivores can exert strong direct and indirect effects on savanna ecosystems and have the potential to create andmaintain savanna landscape heterogeneity. Throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, periodic creation and abandonment of livestock corrals leads to landscape mosaics of long-term ecosystem hotspots that attract both cattle and large ungula...

Forage quality in grassland-savanna ecosystems support high biomass of both wild ungulates and domestic livestock. Forage quality is however variable in both space and time. In this study findings from ecological and laboratory studies, focused on assessing forage quality, are combined to evaluate the feasibility of a remote sensing approach for predicting the spatial and temporal variations in...

Carbohydrates are the primiiary source of reserve energy stored in the vegetative organs of biennial and perennial forage plants. Reserves of available carbohydrates are essential to survival and to the production of plant tissues during periods when carbohydrate utilization exceeds photosynthetic activity. Total available carbohydrate3 levels and trends in storage organs are useful in indicati...

can be harvested with only a slight depression in yields (Redmon et al., 1995). Either option leaves a forage Hard red winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a major cooldeficit period until warm-season perennial grasses are season forage that couples with warm-season perennials to provide livestock feed in the Southern Plains. Productivity and quality of available for grazing in mid summer. wh...

Although plant roots take up nitrogen (N) both as ammonium (NH 4 ) and nitrate (NO 3 ) ions, under most soil conditions uptake of NO 3 dominates. Once absorbed by the plant roots, the NO 3 is reduced to NH 4 , which is subsequently assimilated into organic compounds. However, when the ra te of uptake exceeds the rate of NO 3 reduction, accumulation of NO 3 in plants occurs. Ruminant animals wit...

The degradation of forage cell walls by rumen bacteria was investigated with critical-point drying/scanning electron microscopy and ruthenium red staining/transmission electron microscopy. Differences were observed in the manner of attachment of different morphological types of rumen bacteria to plant cell walls during degradation. Cocci, constituting about 22% of the attached bacteria, appeare...

The rapid decline in bumblebee populations within Europe has been linked to habitat loss through agricultural intensification, and a consequential reduction in the availability of preferred forage plants. The successful introduction of four European Bombus species to the South Island of New Zealand from England (in 1885 and 1906) provides an opportunity to determine how important different fora...

Determination of forage quality of plant species in natural habitats such as rangelands and deserts is one of the most important factors for grazing management of these ecosystems. For this purpose, the nutritional values of Calligonum comosum in three phenological stages (vegetative growth, flowering, and seedling) were determined in desert habitats located in the northeast of Kashan, Iran (in...

Protein in red clover (Trifolium pratense L.), a forage that does not contain condensed tannins, has been found to be degraded less extensively in the rumen than the protein in other non-tannin legumes. The objective of this study was to determine if there are genetic differences in rumen degradability of the protein in red clover forage. Field grown forage was harvested from 133 red clover ent...