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Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0148795): Arid climates have unpredictable precipitation patterns, and wildlife managers often provide supplemental water to help desert ungulates endure the hottest, driest periods. When surface water is unavailable, the only source of water for ungulates comes from the forage they consume, and they must make resourceful foraging decisions to meet their requirements. We compared two desert bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis nelsoni) populations in Arizona, USA: a treatment population with supplemental water removed during treatment, and a control population. We examined whether sheep altered their seasonal diets without supplemental water....
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Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oik.04282/abstract): Nutritional ecology forms the interface between environmental variability and large herbivore behaviour, life history characteristics, and population dynamics. Forage conditions in arid and semi-arid regions are driven by unpredictable spatial and temporal patterns in rainfall. Diet selection by herbivores should be directed towards overcoming the most pressing nutritional limitation (i.e. energy, protein [nitrogen, N], moisture) within the constraints imposed by temporal and spatial variability in forage conditions. We investigated the influence of precipitation-induced shifts in forage nutritional quality and subsequent large herbivore...
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