Extreme climate events pose an ever-increasing threat to savannas around the world. However, the ability of these mixed woodland-grassland ecosystems to resist periods of drought can be improved with a higher number of browsing herbivores—i.e., animals such as kudus, springboks, and common elands that feed on woody vegetation. These help increase the amount of plant diversity and thus the functionality of savannas, as Katja Irob, a biologist at Freie Universität Berlin, has now demonstrated.
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Source: Phys.org