Competition and Resource Partitioning in Temperate Ungulate Assemblies (Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour Series)

In this book, the author addresses the question of how, in many temporate ecosystems, diverse and species-rich assemblies of ungulates manage to co-exist despite often quite extensive overlap in ecological requirements. Putman explores the potential for competition, competition tolerance and even positive facilitation amongst the members of such guilds of ungulates. As a central worked example, the author employs data resulting from over 20 years personal research into the ecology and population dynamics of various large herbivores of the New Forest in Southern England. With these, he applies formal protocols in resource use, evidence for resource limitation and evidence for interaction between species in changing population size over the years. In careful review of published studies of interaction amongst other multispecies ungulate assemblies in Europe and North America conclusions about the forces structuring resource relationships are then extended to consider how widely these conclusions may hold. This volume explores in detail the behaviour and ecology of particular species and discusses wider issues of how particular aspects of the described behaviour or ecology may be adaptive. It provides an insight on a major question in behavioural ecology of interest to wildlife biologists, ecologists, zoologists and conservation biologists.