Thesis (M.Sc.)(Botany)--University of Pretoria, 1999. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

This study explores patterns of body size variation in the ungulates and large carnivores of the British Middle and Late Pleistocene (ca. 750-10 kyr B.P.) and examines how communities were organised in terms of the body sizes of their members. Body size analysis has been carried out using estimated body mass data, produced through the application of allometric scaling equations. A high degree of estimate consistency was achieved within and between skeletal elements, indicating that the methods produce accurate representations of mass. The biostratigraphic scheme applied relates terrestrial deposits to the Oxygen Isotope Record of climatic change. Body mass data generally supports the coherence of the stratigraphic divisions utilised. The majority of species underwent significant mass variation during the study period, with size differences identified at the 01 Stage and Sub-Stage level. Post-crania appear to be more suitable for mass estimation than teeth. Comparison of the mass records produced from dental and post-cranial remains indicates whether size change events had a genetic or ecophenotypic basis. The patterns of body size variation revealed have been related to palaeoenvironmental conditions. British Pleistocene ungulates generally underwent size change opposite to the predictions of Bergmann's rule, while carnivores maintained relatively constant body sizes across periods of temperature variation. Primary productivity and levels of seasonality appear to have been the major determinants of ungulate body size. Carnivore body sizes may be related to size variations in their prey and can also be influenced by vegetation conditions ifpredation levels are affected, although changes in dental proportions may also result. Analysis of community structure suggests that the body sizes of different guild members were not closely linked during the Pleistocene. Community body mass distributions predicted by competition theory have not been consistently identified. The mammal communities appear to be loose associations of species acting individualistically and responding in different ways to environmental challenges.

In this thesis I investigate the application of various statistical approaches towards analysing time series data collected using GPS collars placed on three ungulate species in the same region of the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Animal movement tracking is a rapidly advancing area of ecological research and large datasets are being collected with GPS locations of the animal, with shorter periods between successive locations. A statistical challenge is to segment the movement paths into groups which correspond to different behavioural activities. The aim of my study was to investigate and compare alternative statistical approaches for analysing GPS data and to establish the best statistical framework for interpreting these large herbivore movements. The focus was on which methods are the most appropriate for these animals and the comparison of the movement patterns across species and season. Independent Mixture, Hidden Markov and Bayesian State-Space Models were used to analyse the hourly and daily movements of sable antelope, buffalo and zebra. Mixture Models provide a basic clustering technique to segment the movement paths and identify different underlying groups within the data assumed to correspond to different behavioural states. Posterior probabilities of group membership are used to allocate movements between successive locations to different states. This method ignores the dependence between successive movements. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) use a time series technique and include a dependency between successive observations via a Markov process. Extensions to the HMMs were applied to allow for the inclusion of seasonal covariates and irregular time gaps between successive observations caused by missing locations. A Bayesian state-space model fits a random walk using MCMC methods. The results were very similar to the HMMs but were more challenging to fit and required much more processing time. In the absence of informative prior information, the Bayesian method does not provide any improvement on the HMMs. The HMMs perform slightly better in terms of state allocation accuracy than the Mixture Models. However Mixture Models perform acceptably if only a straightforward clustering of the observations is required. However, if a more robust method is required, the HMMs are relatively easy to fit and extend, allow for investigation of the state switching probabilities and are recommended as the best method for analysing this type of data.

Knowledge of habitat use and selection is essential to managing ungulate populations. This study assesses habitat use by elephant (Loxodonta Africana), giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) and impala (Aepyceros melampus) in Thanda Private Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal. Firstly, I examine the effects of body size dimorphism, sexual segregation and predation on habitat selection and resource partitioning by ungulates. The mechanisms driving resource partitioning strategies were studied at three environmental scales, namely broader habitat (using habitat preference ratios), local environment (using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) and Analysis of Similarity (ANOSIM)) and plant (feeding heights using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Regression analyses). At the habitat level, ungulates show distinct habitat preferences, independent of body size, which did not overlap, thus promote resource partitioning. Habitat selection, at the local environment level, varied among species but not between sexes. Therefore, body size class may influence selection for particular environmental characteristics. At the plant level, resource partitioning was evident among the larger species (giraffe and elephant) versus the smaller species (nyala and impala), but there was no apparent segregation among the sexes within species. Therefore, resource partitioning was strongest at the habitat level, bit less noticeable at the intermediate and finer plant scale. Secondly, I assessed the antipredator behaviour of multi-species assemblage in an experimental context (before vs. after lion reintroduction). I examined herbivore responses in terms of aggregation (forming safer groups), predator avoidance (selecting areas that predators avoid), and habitat selection in terms of habitat structure (selecting areas where capture is less likely), in response to lion reintroduction. Ungulates shifted habitats to avoid lion presence, i.e. into habitats least preferred by lion, and dominant species (based on body size) forced subordinate species into suboptimal habitats. However, counter predictions, ungulates did not increase their group size after lion were released. With the development of small private game reserves, intensive management is essential to maintain ecological heterogeneity, in this case through trophic cascades which promote coexistence. Managing ungulates as ecologically different according to body size will accommodate differences among herbivore populations. Long-term studies of habitat use by ungulates and predators will provide management with information to manipulate factors affecting habitat selection and predation, and thus sustainability of ungulate populations. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2008.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed June 12, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. ix-xv).

Nutrition of exotic animals is still more important part of breeding. In many cases, proper nutrition is the basic factor affecting the success of the whole breed. Nutrition of ungulates in zoos should be based on physiological adaptation of the individual, from the organic niche where the animal lives. According to these aspects, the ungulates can be divided into the "Grazers", the "Browsers" and the species combining the so-called "mixed feeders". In all three groups, it is not only important to satisfy the animal's nutritional needs, but also to bring the most nutritious way of life to the most natural.

Functional morphology and morphometric studies on various mammalian groups have shown marked differences in crania and mandible shape based on dietary preferences and feeding habits. In this study I used three-dimensional geometric morphometric methods to measure the shape of crania and mandibles of herbivorous and omnivorous mammals from three formations in northwestern Nebraska to explore the structure and disparity of ecosystems through time: The White River Group (Chadronian/Orellan/Whitneyan), the Arikaree Group (Arikareean), and the Ogallala Group (Hemingfordian/Barstovian/Clarendonian). Throughout the time period compromising these formations the climatic conditions were becoming more arid, grasslands were expanding and the large mammalian faunal compositions were shifting from browser dominated to grazer dominated. Relative warps analysis show a visible separation of faunas between the three formations that cannot be attributed to phylogeny in plots based on either the crania or the mandibles. Phylogenetic effects were taken into account using generalized least squares. These results indicate that it may be possible to differentiate fossil taxa from different formations and environments based on the shape of cranial and mandibular elements as well as to infer the environment or diet of a fossil if other unequivocal data are not available.

Conservation areas in tropical forests protect the most diverse and threatened ecosystems on the planet. In the Amazon, ungulates are important to forest structure and diversity, but are also food for rural people. I estimated occupancy of white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), collared peccary (T. tajacu), lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris), and red brocket deer (Mazama americana) in Tambopata, Peru to evaluate how different management designations along with anthropogenic and habitat factors influenced the distribution of these species. I used track surveys (n = 258) and camera surveys (n = 256) to estimate ungulate occupancy and detection at 55 sites in a national reserve, a native community, and adjacent buffer areas from May 2008 to March 2009. The best approximating model for white-lipped peccary, lowland tapir, and red brocket deer included only a variable of travel time from the nearest city (a measure of an area's accessibility). Management designation also had some influence on occupancy. I found significantly higher occupancy for collared peccary and red brocket deer in reserve and buffer areas than in the native community but there was no significant difference in occupancy between the reserve and buffer. These results indicate that passive protection might be an adequate management strategy for inaccessible areas of this region. However, as the Amazon continues to be developed, more active enforcement of park boundaries and regulations should be enacted if wildlife conservation is to be effective.

Thesis (M. Sc.)(Wildlife Management)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.