Abstract
In open landscapes, grass leaves provide an abundant resource for ruminants, with potentially high nutritional value. However, their extensive digestion requires a long fermentation time, achieved through large rumen and the stratification of the rumen content. Due to anatomical and physiological differences, ruminants differ in their ability to process grass leaves. Particularly, the small roe deer, with its viscous saliva and unstratified rumen content, is generally classified as a strict browser. We hypothesised that roe deer may be able to use grass leaves in some circumstances, notably when the availability of other resources declines and when the quality of grass leaves is high. We expected that (1) grass leave consumption should be higher in open landscapes than in forest habitat because grasses are more widely available and more nutritious in open landscapes and (2) grass leave consumption should increase in winter when the availability of other resources declines. We assessed grass consumption by microscopic analysis of roe deer faecal pellets collected monthly both in forest habitat and in the surrounding open landscape. We found that both the occurrence and the proportion of grass leaves in the faeces were higher in the open landscape (predicted mean proportion 0.31) than in the forest (predicted mean proportion 0.05). In addition, the proportion of grass leaves in the faeces was higher in winter and lower in spring in both forest and open landscape. We suggest that roe deer are able to use grass leaves with unusually high nutritional quality in winter in this mild climate area. This involves a certain level of digestive plasticity to efficiently digest high quality grasses and may confer nutritional benefit to individuals feeding in an open landscape.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the award of a PhD grant to Frial Abbas. We are grateful to Carole Bannelier and Patrick Petibon for their assistance in chemical analysis. We also thank Mark Hewison for providing comments on this manuscript. We thank numerous colleagues and students for their help with the collection of plant and faecal samples. We are very grateful to Marcus Clauss for their detailed refereeing work on this manuscript that allows us to correct mistakes and improve the discussion. We thank also the second referee, Anne Loison, for help to go deeper in the discussion.
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Abbas, F., Picot, D., Merlet, J. et al. A typical browser, the roe deer, may consume substantial quantities of grasses in open landscapes. Eur J Wildl Res 59, 69–75 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-012-0648-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-012-0648-9