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Long-term surveys of age structure in 13 ungulate and one ostrich species in the Serengeti, 1926–2018

The Serengeti ecosystem spans an extensive network of protected areas in Tanzania, eastern Africa, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to some of the largest animal migrations on the planet. Here, we describe a dataset consisting of the sample counts of three age classes (infant, juvenile and adult) of 13 ungulate and one ostrich species. Sample counts were tallied visually from the ground, or, in some instances, aerial photographs, during a period extending from 1926 to 2018.

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Does tooth wear influence ageing? A comparative study across large herbivores

We test whether the intensity of tooth wear influences the strength of actuarial senescence across species of large herbivores. We collected from the literature data on tooth wear in the wild (measured as the slope of the regression of log-transformed M1 crown height on age), longevity (measured as the age at which 90% of individuals are dead) and two metrics of actuarial senescence in captive populations (rate of senescence between 6 and 12 years of age and Gompertz rate of

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Evaluating the accuracy of some commonly used game-counting methods

The accuracy of game counts on an eastern Transvaal Lowveld game ranch was examined. A drive count was used to produce control estimates of actual population sizes. A helicopter count was more accurate than one from a fixed-wing aircraft. Twenty-four hour waterhole counts were relatively inaccurate. Line transect counts were relatively accurate when a fixed strip width equal to the mean visibility index of the vegetation was used, and when the population estimate was based on the perpendicular sighting distance.

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Host preference of the Yellow-billed Oxpecker Buphagus africanus in the Rhodes Matopos National Park, Rhodesia

Records were kept from May 1977 to April 1978 of Yellow-billed Oxpeckers Buphagus africanus and ungulates seen in the Whovi Wild Area of the Rhodes Matopos National Park. Host preference was determined by recording when oxpeckers were not in attendance. A distinct selection was shown for certain ungulate species, the order of preference being buffalo, white rhino, eland, zebra, giraffe, sable, wildebeest, impala and warthog. Ungulates apparently not utilized at all included waterbuck, duiker, steenbok, reedbuck, tsessebe and klipspringer.

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Mesowear study of ungulates from the early Pleistocene site of ‘Ubeidiya (Israel) and the implications for early Homo dispersal from Africa

An ongoing question in Anthropology and Archaeology focuses on the role of climate change in human evolution and particularly in the dispersal of hominins out of Africa. One of the main hypothesis posits that early Pleistocene sites were open grassland habitats and that early Homo differentially inhabited such environments. Testing the environmental hypothesis requires robust paleoecological reconstructions of early Pleistocene ‘Out of Africa’ sites. The early Pleistocene site of ‘Ubeidiya, central Jordan Valley, Israel, provides an excellent case study to

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Detection probabilities of ungulates in the eastern Swaziland lowveld

The management of large ungulates in Southern Africa necessitates reliable monitoring programmes to direct management action. Monitoring programmes for large ungulates typically rely on spotlight survey methods, but do not address variation in detection rates between surveys or observers. In 2009, we used a multiple observer survey technique to estimate detection probabilities for large ungulates in lowveld savanna habitats in Swaziland. Spotlight detection probabilities for all ungulates ranged between 0.22 and 0.57. Species-specific spotlight detection rates for the two most

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Two quantitative methods of analysing ungulate habitat data

Ungulate habitat data for 10 ungulate types that use the grasslands of Jack Scott Nature Reserve were quantitatively analysed using simultaneous confidence intervals and detrended correspondence analysis. The first method is hypothesis-testing whereas the second method is hypothesis-generating. The two methods complemented each other and both revealed the same major habitat selection patterns.

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Waterhole use by African fauna

Water is one of the fundamental requirements of life but there has been little study on the use of water by free-ranging wildlife communities. We investigated the timing of waterhole use by African fauna using webcams to determine whether this mode of data collection was viable, to determine whether animals drank randomly throughout the day, whether there were differences between guilds in waterhole use and finally we created a relative rank of water dependency by comparing waterhole use with the

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Comparative phylogeography of African savannah ungulates

The savannah biome of sub-Saharan Africa harbours the highest diversity of ungulates (hoofed mammals) on Earth. In this review, we compile population genetic data from 19 codistributed ungulate taxa of the savannah biome and find striking concordance in the phylogeographic structuring of species. Data from across taxa reveal distinct regional lineages, which reflect the survival and divergence of populations in isolated savannah refugia during the climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene. Data from taxa across trophic levels suggest distinct savannah refugia

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Functional Characterization of Ungulate Molars Using the Abrasion-Attrition Wear Gradient: A New Method for Reconstructing Paleodiets

The analysis of fossil ungulate cheek teeth has long been one of the main sources of information about the terrestrial environments of the Cenozoic, but the methods used to extract this information have been either imprecise or prohibitively laborious. Here we present a method based on relative facet development that is quantitative, robust, and rapid. This method, which we term mesowear analysis, is based on the physical properties of ungulate foods as reflected in the relative amounts of attritive and

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