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Grazing Succession

node · earth · Serengeti–Mara ecosystem

The proposed ordering of migrant grazers by body size, set out by Bell in 1971: zebra first, wildebeest roughly eight weeks later, Thomson's gazelle roughly eight weeks after that, each species opening up forage for the next. GPS-collar, dietary and camera-trap data published in Science in 2024 only partly upheld it. Zebra and wildebeest travelled much closer together than predicted, with competition rather than facilitation pushing zebra ahead; gazelle did trail the large migrants by about three weeks, consistent with facilitation but over a far shorter lag than Bell described. The textbook version is a simplification of a push–pull dynamic.

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Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 11 blocks · 1 evidence · 16 related

  1. Story
  2. The proposed ordering of migrant grazers by body size, set out by Bell in 1971: zebra first, wildebeest roughly eight weeks later, Thomson's gazelle roughly eight weeks after that, each species opening up forage for the next. GPS-collar, dietary and camera-trap data published in Science in 2024 only partly upheld it. Zebra and wildebeest travelled much closer together than predicted, with competition rather than facilitation pushing zebra ahead; gazelle did trail the large migrants by about three weeks, consistent with facilitation but over a far shorter lag than Bell described. The textbook version is a simplification of a push–pull dynamic.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Plains Zebra (Equus quagga)
  5. Grazing Succession
  6. Connections
  7. Plains Zebra (Equus quagga)
  8. Blue Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus)
  9. Grazing Succession
  10. Evidence
  11. GPS-collar, dietary and camera-trap data show a push–pull dynamic in which competition pushes zebra ahead of wildebeest and facilitation pulls Thomson's gazelle about three weeks behind, only partly matching Bell's 1971 grazing-succession model
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/atlas?object=PHENOMENON_ALLOMETRIC_GRAZING&experience=PHENOMENON_ALLOMETRIC_GRAZING