Abstract
Many small Parks inKenyaare being fenced to control human-wildlife conflict. Some of these Parks have a diversity of large herbivores which might increase in density in the wake of fencing and subsequent compression of their home ranges due to closure of their migratory routes. It is important to understand the consequences of such an increase on the structuring of insularised herbivore assemblages in such Parks. We studied seasonal resource segregation and niche breadth variation as mechanisms of coexistence in a high density grazer assemblage inLakeNakuruNational Parkwhich is small and completely fenced. Diet composition and habitat use were considered as variables of resource use. We predicted that overlap in resource use and niche breadth would be the smallest among grazers with similar body weights in the dry season which is the most resource limiting for grazers in East Africa. Our results were contrary to the predictions because of lack of seasonal differentiation in the overlap of diet composition and habitat use, and in niche breadth. Overlaps in resource use were consistently high during both the wet and dry seasons, and niche breadth contraction during the dry season was not possible probably because of lack of species-specific niches during the dry season. Our results suggest that there might be competitive interactions in this grazer assemblage which is an important parameter to consider in the management of the Park.
Highlights
The mechanisms by which coexistence of apparently many similar grazing ungulates is made possible have been a subject of study for some time [1,2,3,4]
For species in similar body weight classes, the lowest overlap in diet composition was observed during the late wet season, probably because during this season which
The dry season of 1999 received rainfall, which was abnormal because traditionally it doesn’t receive any, and because of this, green standing crop biomass was still available during this season
Summary
The mechanisms by which coexistence of apparently many similar grazing ungulates is made possible have been a subject of study for some time [1,2,3,4]. It is expected that during the non-limiting season, grazers in similar body weight classes will overlap more in resource use and have wider niche breadth in resource. Studies in overlap of resource use and variation in niche breadth in dense assemblages of grazers in small fenced National Parks where there is no dry or wet season grazer migration have not been reported in literature. With this background we assessed overlap in seasonal diet composition and habitat use as major variables of overlap in resource use, and the implications of niche breadth in diet composition and habitat use on a high density assemblage of six coexisting large grazers of different body weights in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya which is a small Park (188 km2) that has been completely fenced since 1977. The study hypothesised that, overlap in resource use between species in similar body weight classes, would be lowest in the dry season, and niche breadth in resource use would be smallest during the dry season
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