Abstract
It is essential to assess the feeding strategies of threatened species during resource-scarce seasons to understand their dietary niche breadth and inform appropriate habitat management measures. In this study, we examined the diet composition of four-horned antelope (FHA) Tetracerus and quadricornis, one of the least studied ungulate species, in Banke National Park, Nepal. A total of 53 fresh pellet groups were collected between December 2015 and January 2016 and analyzed using micro-histological fecal analysis technique. First, we prepared 133 micro-histological photographs of different parts of 64 reference plant species. Then we compared 1,590 fragments of 53 fecal samples with photographs of reference plants to assess the percentage of occurrence of different plant species in FHA diet. A total of 30 plant species belonging to 18 different families were identified in fecal samples. Chi-square goodness of fit tests showed that FHA appeared not to feed all plant uniformly. Out of 1,520 identified fragments in fecal samples, 1,300 were browse species and 220 were grass species. Browse represented 85.5% of the identified plant fragments, suggesting that FHA might be adopting a browser strategy at least during winter when grasses are low in abundance and their nutritive quality is poor. Tree species had the highest contribution in the diet (46.55%) followed by shrubs (24.52%). The family Gramineae was consumed in the highest proportion (27.68%) followed by Euphorbiaceae (11.95%). Overall, our results suggest that FHA has the feeding plasticity to adapt to resource fluctuation. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend that dicot plant species—particularly fruit trees and shrubs, which are the major source of nutrients for FHA during resource-lean, dry season—be conserved and natural regeneration of these taxa be promoted.
Highlights
Knowledge of the diet composition of endangered wildlife species is very important to understand foraging ecology and to devise conservation management actions for their longterm persistence (Belovsky, 1997; Ahrestani et al, 2016). Such knowledge is important for ungulates in seasonal environments (Parker, Barboza & Gillingham, 2009) where resource availability is pulsed in summer and scarcity is acute during the arid winter season (Styles & Skinner, 1997; Ahrestani, Heitkönig & Prins, 2012)
We examined the winter season food habit of four-horned antelope (FHA), a sparsely distributed yet threatened species native to Nepal and India (IUCN SSC Antelope Specialist Group, 2017), based on micro-histological analysis of the collected fecal pellet samples
Our result shows that dicots had a significantly higher percentage of occurrences in FHA pellets than monocots
Summary
Knowledge of the diet composition of endangered wildlife species is very important to understand foraging ecology and to devise conservation management actions for their longterm persistence (Belovsky, 1997; Ahrestani et al, 2016). Such knowledge is important for ungulates in seasonal environments (Parker, Barboza & Gillingham, 2009) where resource availability is pulsed in summer and scarcity is acute during the arid winter season (Styles & Skinner, 1997; Ahrestani, Heitkönig & Prins, 2012). Understanding the diet composition of a species during resource-lean season is critical to understand diet plasticity and inform forage management measures
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