Cattle and wild vertebrate habitat use in a long-term exclosure experiment

1. Cattle and other livestock graze more than a quarter of the world’s terrestrial area and are widely regarded to be drivers of global biodiversity declines. Studies often compare the effects of livestock presence/absence but, to our knowledge, no studies have tested for interactive effects between large wild herbivores and livestock at varying stocking rates on small-bodied wild vertebrates.

2. We investigated the effects of cattle stocking rates (none/moderate/high) on the diversity of wildlife 0.05-1000 kg using camera traps at a long-term exclosure experiment within a semi-arid savanna ecosystem in central Kenya. In addition, by selectively excluding wild ‘mesoherbivores’ (50-1000 kg) and ‘megaherbivores’ (>1000 kg; elephant and giraffe), we tested whether the presence of these two wild herbivore guilds (collectively, ‘larger wild herbivores’) mediates the effect of cattle stocking rate on habitat use and diversity of ‘smaller wildlife’ (mammals ranging between 10-70 cm shoul...

1. 牛类与其他家畜的放牧活动覆盖全球逾四分之一的陆地放牧生境，被广泛认为是全球生物多样性下降的关键驱动因子之一。现有研究多对比家畜存在与缺失的生态效应，但据我们所知，目前尚无研究探讨不同放牧强度下，大型野生草食动物与家畜的交互作用对小型野生脊椎动物的影响。
2. 本研究依托肯尼亚中部半干旱稀树草原生态系统内的长期围栏控制实验（exclosure experiment），采用红外相机陷阱（camera traps）调查了牛放牧强度（无放牧、中度放牧、高强度放牧）对体重0.05~1000千克的野生动物类群多样性的影响。此外，本研究通过选择性排除野生中型草食动物（mesoherbivores，体重50~1000千克）与巨型草食动物（megaherbivores，体重>1000千克，涵盖大象与长颈鹿）这两个野生草食动物功能群（wild herbivore guilds，合称为"大型野生草食动物"），验证了这两类群的存在是否会调控牛放牧强度对"小型野生动物"（肩高10~70厘米的哺乳类，原文未完整表述）的生境利用与多样性的影响。