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Drought but not population density influences dietary niche breadth in white‐tailed deer in a semiarid environment

Donald J. Folks,Kory R. Gann,T. Fulbright,D. Hewitt,Charles A. Deyoung,D. Wester,Kim N. Echols,Don A. Draeger

Published 2014 in Ecosphere

ABSTRACT

A premise in ungulate foraging theory is that animals become less selective and expand the breadth of their dietary niche as the availability of palatable forage declines with increasing herbivore population density or drought. Increased niche variation resulting from intraspecific competition is thought to create less similar diet composition and decreased diet overlap between individuals within a population at higher densities than between individuals within less dense populations. These ideas were largely developed in relatively mesic environments and their applicability to ungulate foraging in semiarid environments is unclear. We tested the idea that white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) contract dietary niche breadth; reduce dietary plant species diversity, richness, and evenness; and become more individualistic in forage choices in response to a fourfold difference in population density (12 deer/km2 versus 50 deer/km2) in semiarid shrubland in Texas, USA. We used the bite count method to determ...

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