Mammalian herbivores browse palatable plants of ecological and economical value. Undesirable neighbours can reduce browsing to these plants by providing 'associational refuge', but they can also compete for resources. Here we recreated the informative odour emitted by undesirable plants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen foraging, making appropriate food choices is crucial to an animal's fitness. Classic foraging ecology theories assume animals choose food of greatest benefit based on their absolute value across multiple dimensions. Consequently, poorer options are considered irrelevant alternatives that should not influence decision-making among better options.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAll organisms emit odour, providing 'open-access' olfactory information for any receiver with the right sensory apparatus. Characterizing open-access information emitted by groups of organisms, such as plant species, provides the means to answer significant questions about ecological interactions and their evolution. We present a new conceptual framework defining information reliability and a practical method to characterize and recover information from amongst olfactory noise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForaging by mammalian herbivores has profound impacts on natural and modified landscapes, yet we know little about how they find food, limiting our ability to predict and manage their influence. Mathematical models show that foragers exploiting odour cues outperform a random walk strategy. However, discovering how free-ranging foragers exploit odours in real, complex landscapes has proven elusive because of technological constraints.
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