Direction Etudes et Recherches Guyane, Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage, Kourou, French Guiana, France.
PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e25850. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025850. Epub 2011 Oct 3.
While the populations of large herbivores are being depleted in many tropical rainforests, the importance of their trophic role in the ecological functioning and biodiversity of these ecosystems is still not well evaluated. This is due to the outstanding plant diversity that they feed upon and the inherent difficulties involved in observing their elusive behaviour. Classically, the diet of elusive tropical herbivores is studied through the observation of browsing signs and macroscopic analysis of faeces or stomach contents. In this study, we illustrate that the original coupling of classic methods with genetic and ethnobotanical approaches yields information both about the diet diversity, the foraging modalities and the potential impact on vegetation of the largest terrestrial mammal of Amazonia, the lowland tapir. The study was conducted in the Guianan shield, where the ecology of tapirs has been less investigated. We identified 92 new species, 51 new genera and 13 new families of plants eaten by tapirs. We discuss the relative contribution of our different approaches, notably the contribution of genetic barcoding, used for the first time to investigate the diet of a large tropical mammal, and how local traditional ecological knowledge is accredited and valuable for research on the ecology of elusive animals.
虽然许多热带雨林中的大型草食动物的数量正在减少，但它们在这些生态系统的生态功能和生物多样性中的营养作用的重要性仍未得到很好的评估。这是由于它们所食用的植物多样性非常突出，以及观察它们难以捉摸的行为所涉及的固有困难。传统上，通过观察啃食痕迹和对粪便或胃内容物进行宏观分析来研究难以捉摸的热带草食动物的饮食。在这项研究中，我们表明，经典方法与遗传和民族植物学方法的原始结合，不仅提供了关于饮食多样性、觅食方式以及对亚马逊地区最大的陆生哺乳动物——低地貘的植被潜在影响的信息。该研究在圭亚那盾进行，那里对貘的生态学研究较少。我们确定了 92 种新的植物物种、51 个新属和 13 个新的植物科，这些植物都是被貘食用的。我们讨论了我们不同方法的相对贡献，特别是遗传条形码的贡献，这是首次用于研究大型热带哺乳动物的饮食，以及当地传统生态知识如何得到认可，并对难以捉摸的动物生态学研究具有价值。
