Megaherbivores provide biotic resistance against alien plant dominance
Authors: Ninad Avinash Mungi, Yadvendradev V. Jhala, Qamar Qureshi, Elizabeth le Roux & Jens-Christian Svenning
Date: 31/08/2023
Publisher: Nature Ecology & Evolution
While human-driven biological invasions are rapidly spreading, finding scalable and effective control methods poses an unresolved challenge. Here, the authors assess whether megaherbivores—herbivores reaching ≥1,000 kg of body mass—offer a nature-based solution to plant invasions. Invasive plants are generally adapted to maximize vegetative growth. Megaherbivores, with broad dietary tolerances, could remove large biomass of established plants, facilitating new plant growth. They used a massive dataset obtained from 26,838 camera stations and 158,979 vegetation plots to assess the relationships between megaherbivores, native plants and alien plants across India (~121,330 km2).

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