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NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2024

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Sammendrag

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Sammendrag

The moose (Alces alces) is a large-bodied, ruminant herbivore inhabiting temperate and boreal forests, where their foraging can profoundly influence ecological processes. In intensively managed landscapes, such as large parts of Scandinavia, browsing by moose can also affect human economic interests, such as commercial forestry. Deciphering the nutritional underpinnings of the moose’ foraging choices is therefore in the interest of both wildlife ecology and forest management. In this talk I will summarise findings from several studies from Scandinavia in which we have used the nutritional geometry framework to study moose foraging behavior. First, a small feeding experiment with captive moose indicated that their food choice was not governed by energy maximization as previously postulated. Instead the moose appeared to combine food to reach a target macronutritional balance. We later confirmed this pattern of macronutrient balancing by analysing rumen content (by wet chemistry and NIRS) and faeces (indirectly via by DNA metabarcoding) from a large number of wild moose during wintertime across Sweden. The moose’ tendency to maintain a stable balance between protein and non-structural carbohydrates was most recently confirmed by a detailed study of moose summer time in Norway, using camera collars and plant collections. These studies on the Scandinavian moose have also revealed patterns of complementarity, compensatory intake, linkages to damage and fitness, and valuable information about key forage plant species, and thereby help to improve our understanding of nutritional ecology.