Andrew Abraham

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

11. Ultimately, the world is a richer, more resilient, more adaptable place when animals get to play their natural ecosystem roles. It's us that messed it up!

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

9. By effectively considering Double-Edged Dispersal, animals can be successfully harnessed to help mitigate the greatest environmental challenges of our time: the climate, biodiversity and emerging disease crises.

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

7. In the Anthropocene, almost all animals disperse both desirable and undesirable things at the same time. Yet, we tend to focus on forms individually. While animals may help in one way (e.g., adaptation to climate change), they may present challenges in others (e.g., accumulation of toxins).

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

5. Humans have known about the importance of animal-mediated dispersal for centuries. The earliest records come from Pliny the Elder who emphasised the importance of animal seed dispersal, or zoochory.

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

3. Humans have reshaped natural dispersal functions through altered (i) resource availability, (ii) wildlife assemblages and (iii) animal movement patterns. This ecosystem reorganisation may create, modify or lose important ecological links.

Doubled-edged Dispersal! In the Anthropocene, animals disperse a lot of things. From seeds and nutrients, to pathogens and invasives. Our new paper discusses the need to balance trade-offs when both desirable and undesirable functions occur simultaneously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1. Animals can move, enabling them to disperse many materials and propagules, including chemical compounds, seeds, pollen, parasites, organisms, toxins, pollutants and many more.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

So, next time you sit down to dinner and immediately reach for the salt shaker, spare a thought for Africa’s salt-starved megaherbivores.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Where animals can't get enough salt in their diet, they may come into conflict with humans. Many protected areas are located in low-sodium environments; yet humans have artificially increased salt availability through activities like borehole water pumping and crop fertilisation.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Gorillas on the other hand are known to fight for the saltiest foods, in particular decaying wood stumps that accumulate high levels of sodium (photo credit: Jessica Rothman)

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Together, these results provide a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores' in West and Central Africa. There is enough productivity to sustain higher densities of elephants, rhinos and giraffes, but a curious absence of these largest-bodied herbivores.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Interestingly, we found that in any given place, grasses had approximately 1-2x more sodium than woody plants; a pattern that was reflected by grazers generally having higher dung sodium concentrations that browsers.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

We collected a large database of plant sodium concentrations from across Africa and generated high-resolution maps, which revealed multi-scale gradients arising from sea-salt deposition, hydrology, soil chemistry and plant traits.

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt. Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2