Serengeti ’s ‘breathtaking’ mammal migration shaped by grazers’ diets

Related Reports Long-Term Modulation of Electrical Synapses in the Mammalian Thalamus BY Carole E. Landisman, Barry W. Connors Each April, some 200,000 zebras begin their journey 800 kilometers northward through the Serengeti in Tanzania and into Kenya. About 1.3 million wildebeests join the throng, and after nearly 1 month come 400,000 Thomson’s gazelles. The procession is “breathtaking,” says T. Michael Anderson, a savanna ecologist at Wake Forest University. Today in Science , he and colleagues clarify the timing and other details of this iconic migration , uncovering complex forces that order each species’ movements and showing how fire and unusual weather can disrupt them. By watching the herds with camera traps for 8 years, tracking them with GPS, and collecting feces to understand their diets, the group has “unraveled the mysteries of one of most impressive natural spectacles in the world,” says Duncan Kimuyu, an ecologist at Karatina University. Diet, the authors find, is a major factor shaping the migration. “Each species affects the availability of forage for others,” says Emily Bennitt, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Botswana. Before humans dominated much of the landscape, large grazing mammals made seasonal migratio...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research