Volatiles and Tannins in Pistacia lentiscus and Their Role in Browsing Behavior of Goats (Capra hircus).

Goat herding is an important tool in the ecologically sound management of Mediterranean shrublands and woodlands, although effective levels of woody biomass removal by the goats is neither guaranteed nor easy to predict. Preliminary observations indicated that one reason for this may be poor understanding of plant-herbivore interactions that operate intraspecifically at the local spatial scale. We asked, whether goats show intraspecific preferences among neighboring plants when foraging a small local population of Pistacia lentiscus, a dominant tall shrub.

Innate ability of goats to sense and avoid ingestion of noxious insects while feeding.

Large mammalian herbivores regularly encounter noxious insects on their food plants. Recent evidence revealed that goats efficiently avoid insect ingestion while feeding, yet it is unknown whether this ability is innate. We experimentally examined the behavioural responses of naive goat kids to a common insect, the spring-webworm ().

How goats avoid ingesting noxious insects while feeding.

As mammalian herbivores feed, they often encounter noxious insects on plants. It is unknown how they handle such insects. We experimentally examined the behavioural responses of goats to the noxious spring-webworm (Ocnogyna loewii), and manipulated their sensory perception to reveal the process of insect detection.

No major role for binding by salivary proteins as a defense against dietary tannins in Mediterranean goats.

We investigated whether Mediterranean goats use salivary tannin-binding proteins to cope with tannin-rich forages by determining the affinity of salivary or parotid gland proteins for tannic acid or quebracho tannin. Mixed saliva, sampled from the oral cavity, or parotid gland contents were compared to the intermediate affinity protein bovine serum albumin with a competitive binding assay. Goats that consume tannin-rich browse (Damascus) and goats that tend to avoid tannins (Mamber) were sequentially fed high (Pistacia lentiscus L.