ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2012
Stable isotope series from elephant ivory reveal lifetime histories of a true dietary generalist.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Within-population isotopic niche variation of mammalian herbivores over a body mass and habitat gradient.BMC ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Differences in Olfactory Discrimination, but Not Sensitivity, Between African Savanna and Asian Elephants.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Individual Specialization in a Generalist Apex Predator: The Leopard Seal.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Global long-term stability of individual dietary specialization in herbivorous mammals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Nutritional influences on enzyme activities in saliva of Asian and African elephants.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2021Article
- Article
- Are there phylogenetic differences in salivary tannin-binding proteins between browsers and grazers, and ruminants and hindgut fermenters?Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- The relationship between the phosphate and structural carbonate fractionation of fallow deer bioapatite in tooth enamel.Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM · 2019Article
- Multiproxy evidence for leaf-browsing and closed habitats in extinct proboscideans (Mammalia, Proboscidea) from Central Chile.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Within trophic level shifts in collagen-carbonate stable carbon isotope spacing are propagated by diet and digestive physiology in large mammal herbivores.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Does diet influence salivary enzyme activities in elephant species?Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2017Article
- Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness.Head and neck pathology · 2016Review
- The temporal scale of diet and dietary proxies.Ecology and evolution · 2016Review
- Mapping the Elephants of the 19th Century East African Ivory Trade with a Multi-Isotope Approach.PloS one · 2016Article
- Effects of demineralization on the stable isotope analysis of bone samples.Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM · 2015Article
- Article
- Bomb-curve radiocarbon measurement of recent biologic tissues and applications to wildlife forensics and stable isotope (paleo)ecology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Longitudinal studies have revealed how variation in resource use within consumer populations can impact their dynamics and functional significance in communities. Here, we investigate multi-decadal diet variations within individuals of a keystone megaherbivore species, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana), using serial stable isotope analysis of tusks from the Kruger National Park, South Africa. These records, representing the longest continuous diet histories documented for any extant species, reveal extensive seasonal and annual variations in isotopic--and hence dietary--niches of individuals, but little variation between them. Lack of niche distinction across individuals contrasts several recent studies, which found relatively high levels of individual niche specialization in various taxa. Our result is consistent with theory that individual mammal herbivores are nutritionally constrained to maintain broad diet niches. Individual diet specialization would also be a costly strategy for large-bodied taxa foraging over wide areas in spatio-temporally heterogeneous environments. High levels of within-individual diet variability occurred within and across seasons, and persisted despite an overall increase in inferred C(4) grass consumption through the twentieth century. We suggest that switching between C(3) browsing and C(4) grazing over extended time scales facilitates elephant survival through environmental change, and could even allow recovery of overused resources.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.