Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 287, Issue 1926, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.3000
Keywords
ecosystem metabolism; organic matter; hippopotamus; livestock; subsidy; primary production
Categories
Funding
- International Foundation for Science [A/5810-1]
- Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc fellowship
- German research foundation (within the Research Training Group on Urban Water Interfaces) [GRK 2032]
- U.S. National Science Foundation [DEB 1354053, DEB 1753727]
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In many regions of the world, populations of large wildlife have been displaced by livestock, and this may change the functioning of aquatic ecosystems owing to significant differences in the quantity and quality of their dung. We developed a model for estimating loading rates of organic matter (dung) by cattle for comparison with estimated rates for hippopotamus in the Mara River, Kenya. We then conducted a replicated mesocosm experiment to measure ecosystem effects of nutrient and carbon inputs associated with dung from livestock (cattle) versus large wildlife (hippopotamus). Our loading model shows that per capita dung input by cattle is lower than for hippos, but total dung inputs by cattle constitute a significant portion of loading from large herbivores owing to the large numbers of cattle on the landscape. Cattle dung transfers higher amounts of limiting nutrients, major ions and dissolved organic carbon to aquatic ecosystems relative to hippo dung, and gross primary production and microbial biomass were higher in cattle dung treatments than in hippo dung treatments. Our results demonstrate that different forms of animal dung may influence aquatic ecosystems in fundamentally different ways when introduced into aquatic ecosystems as a terrestrially derived resource subsidy.
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