Nutritional ecology of free ranging herbivores

澳大利亚的草原支撑着我们大部分的畜牧业，并为许多本地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食用了多少食物，以及食物的营养质量如何变化。然而，没有简单的方法可以做到这一点，这阻碍了及时操纵库存数量，并限制了我们预测袋鼠等本地食草动物数量波动的能力。该项目将为生态学家和土地管理者提供一种廉价和快速的方法，将营养分析纳入他们的工作中

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