Nutritional ecology of free ranging herbivores

澳大利亚草原支撑着我们的大部分畜牧业，为许多本土动植物提供了重要的栖息地。为了可持续地管理这些地区，农民和其他土地管理者需要知道动物消耗了多少食物，以及这些食物的营养质量是如何变化的。然而，没有简单的方法来做到这一点，这阻止了对种群数量的及时操纵，并限制了我们预测本土食草动物(如袋鼠)数量波动的能力。该项目将为生态学家和土地管理人员提供一种廉价而快速的手段，将营养分析纳入他们的工作

Australian grasslands underpin most of our livestock industries and provide important habitats for many native plants and animals. In order to manage these areas sustainably, farmers and other land managers need to know how much food animals consume and how the nutritional quality of that food varies. However there is no simple way of doing this and this prevents timely manipulation of stock numbers and limits our ability to predict fluctuations in numbers of native herbivores such as kangaroos. The project will provide a cheap and quick means for ecologists and land managers to incorporate nutritional analyses into their work