Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Reconstructing Terrestrial Paleoclimate and Paleoecology with Fossil Leaves Using Digital Leaf Physiognomy and Leaf Mass Per Area
Published on: October 25, 2024
Landscape nutrition: seeing the forest instead of the trees
1Department of Biology, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA. jpastor@d.umn.edu
Abstract:
Recent theories suggest that herbivores forage across many scales and that foraging decisions are driven by the distribution of nitrogen. However, experimental tests of these predictions across large landscapes are rare and difficult. Pretorius et al. (2011) present an elegant experimental design to test how patch size, local nutrient density and total nutrient load are detected by foraging African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Colophospermum mopane shrub veld in South Africa. This experiment should serve as a model for investigations of how herbivores detect and respond to high nutrient patches of different size; it also raises questions for further research, such as the fate of high nutrient patches as elephants disperse nutrients from them in urine, faecal material and carcasses deposited elsewhere in the landscape.
Related Concept Videos
Optimal Foraging
Light Acquisition
Naturalistic Observations
Introduction to Plant Diversity
Epiphytes, Parasites, and Carnivores
Key Elements for Plant Nutrition
