Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

High herbivore density associated with vegetation diversity in interglacial ecosystems

Christopher J. Sandom, Rasmus Ejrnæs, Morten D. D. Hansen, and Jens-Christian Svenning
  1. aEcoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark;
  2. bWildlife Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation, Department of Bioscience, Kalø, Aarhus University, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark;
  3. cNatural History Museum Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS first published March 3, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1311014111
Christopher J. Sandom
aEcoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark;
bWildlife Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation, Department of Bioscience, Kalø, Aarhus University, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: chris.sandom81@gmail.com svenning@biology.au.dk
Rasmus Ejrnæs
bWildlife Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation, Department of Bioscience, Kalø, Aarhus University, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Morten D. D. Hansen
cNatural History Museum Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Jens-Christian Svenning
aEcoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: chris.sandom81@gmail.com svenning@biology.au.dk
  1. Edited by William J. Sutherland, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and accepted by the Editorial Board February 4, 2014 (received for review June 25, 2013)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

Megafaunas have been decimated worldwide during the last 50,000 y, with poorly understood ecosystem consequences. In Europe, the ability of the extinct megafauna to generate structurally diverse vegetation within the temperate forest biome is controversial and has important implications for conservation management. We used paleoecological beetle data to reconstruct the abundance of large herbivores and the vegetation structure in Great Britain before and after the megafaunal extinctions. We found indications of high abundances of large herbivores and a mosaic of closed forest and wood–pasture vegetation in the last interglacial period and primarily closed forests with lower herbivore abundance in the early Holocene. These findings support an important role for large herbivores in driving vegetation dynamics and in current efforts to promote landscape diversity through rewilding.

Abstract

The impact of large herbivores on ecosystems before modern human activities is an open question in ecology and conservation. For Europe, the controversial wood–pasture hypothesis posits that grazing by wild large herbivores supported a dynamic mosaic of vegetation structures at the landscape scale under temperate conditions before agriculture. The contrasting position suggests that European temperate vegetation was primarily closed forest with relatively small open areas, at most impacted locally by large herbivores. Given the role of modern humans in the world-wide decimations of megafauna during the late Quaternary, to resolve this debate it is necessary to understand herbivore–vegetation interactions before these losses. Here, a synthetic analysis of beetle fossils from Great Britain shows that beetles associated with herbivore dung were better represented during the Last Interglacial (132,000–110,000 y B.P., before modern human arrival) than in the early Holocene (10,000–5,000 y B.P.). Furthermore, beetle assemblages indicate closed and partially closed forest in the early Holocene but a greater mixture of semiopen vegetation and forest in the Last Interglacial. Hence, abundant and diverse large herbivores appear to have been associated with high structural diversity of vegetation before the megafauna extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene. After these losses and in the presence of modern humans, large herbivores generally were less abundant, and closed woodland was more prevalent in the early Holocene. Our findings point to the importance of the formerly rich fauna of large herbivores in sustaining structurally diverse vegetation in the temperate forest biome and provide support for recent moves toward rewilding-based conservation management.

  • paleoecology
  • forest structure
  • Vera hypothesis
  • dung beetles

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: chris.sandom81{at}gmail.com or svenning{at}biology.au.dk.
  • Author contributions: C.J.S. and J.-C.S. designed research; C.J.S. performed research; M.D.D.H. provided specialist information on beetles; C.J.S., M.D.D.H., and J.-C.S. analyzed data; and C.J.S., R.E., and J.-C.S. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. W.J.S. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1311014111/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

Next
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
High herbivore density associated with vegetation diversity in interglacial ecosystems
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Large herbivores and interglacial ecosystems
Christopher J. Sandom, Rasmus Ejrnæs, Morten D. D. Hansen, Jens-Christian Svenning
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2014, 201311014; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1311014111

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Large herbivores and interglacial ecosystems
Christopher J. Sandom, Rasmus Ejrnæs, Morten D. D. Hansen, Jens-Christian Svenning
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2014, 201311014; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1311014111
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 118 (16)
Current Issue

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Reflection of clouds in the still waters of Mono Lake in California.
Inner Workings: Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Cave in coastal Kenya with tree growing in the middle.
Journal Club: Small, sharp blades mark shift from Middle to Later Stone Age in coastal Kenya
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Mouse fibroblast cells. Electron bifurcation reactions keep mammalian cells alive.
Exploring electron bifurcation
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490