Zebras , Aepyceros melampus , elephant , and a handful of other large African herbivores have surprisingly different diets , according to a newfangled analysis of plant desoxyribonucleic acid in animal dung . With each species enjoying their own favorite plants , the slim competition over time may excuse how so many wondrous species have managed to coexist . Thefindings , put out inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthis hebdomad , suggest that various vegetation may be primal in maintaining the continent ’s rich smorgasbord of fauna .
Large industrial plant - eating mammal in the semi - arid African savanna fall along a continuum , from grass - eating grazers to non - grass - eating browsers who dine from trees and shrub . There are lashings of different plant , and there ’s a immense variety of flora eaters , but exactly how so many herbivores manage to live near each other on such a limited kitchen stove of resource types has been a mystery .
To inquire , Princeton ’s Tyler Kartzineland confrere analyze the diet of an assemblage of brute at the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya . Buffalo , Grevy ’s zebras , plains zebras , and domestic Boran cattle make up the grazers , while elephants , impalas , and small , 5 - kilogram antelope call dik - diks are the non - grazers . These 7 make up 99 percent of the orotund mammalian herbivore in this ecosystem .
The team sequenced works desoxyribonucleic acid from 292 faecal samples collected from June to July in 2013 . They then turned to a of late developed technique call DNA metabarcoding : Gene chronological succession recover in the faecal samples were matched to know plant deoxyribonucleic acid from a reference library . This let them to measure the breadth of the animal ’ dieting , the composition , and any overlap .
“ When I lecture to non - ecologist , they are knocked out to con that we have never really had a light picture of what all of these charismatic large mammals actually eat in nature,”Kartzinel explains . “ What we show is that the dietetic differences among species are far capital than everyone has assumed . ”
The penning of their diet were similar within mintage but strongly divergent across mintage . Dietary lap was the greatest between species that were similar in size and close related . The two type of zebra , for representative , use up 45 dissimilar plants wholly , but 15 of those were found far more ofttimes in one zebra than the other . “ This may not sound like much at first , but it ’s a third of all of the food type that we detected in the diet of either species,”Kartzinel tells Smithsonian . Similarly , at least 12 eatage and 4 Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree were determine far more often in buffalo poo than in cow poo . “ You might all choose the same primary course , but when it come to side dishes and condiments , you have C of options,”he add , speaking to National Geographic . “ It ’s unlikely that you ’ll all end up with the same meal . ”
By relieve some solid food contender , this so - called “ dietetic niche partitioning ” made it possible for so many ecologically similar animals to coexist – and it likely contributed to the source of this biodiversity .
prototype : Andrzej Kubik ( top ) , John Carnemolla / shutterstock.com ( middle )
