ArticlePeerJ2018
Large-scale assessment of commensalistic-mutualistic associations between African birds and herbivorous mammals using internet photos.
Article in PeerJ, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Predator experience enhances giraffe vigilance to oxpecker alarm calls.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Interspecific coprophagia by wild red foxes: DNA metabarcoding reveals a potentially widespread form of commensalism among animals.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- The peopleParasitology · 2021Article
- Online media reveals a global problem of discarded containers as deadly traps for animals.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media.PeerJ · 2020Article
- The two oxpecker species reveal the role of movement rates and foraging intensity in species coexistence.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Large mammal declines and the incipient loss of mammal-bird mutualisms in an African savanna ecosystem.PloS one · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Birds sitting or feeding on live large African herbivorous mammals are a visible, yet quite neglected, type of commensalistic-mutualistic association. Here, we investigate general patterns in such relationships at large spatial and taxonomic scales. To obtain large-scale data, an extensive internet-based search for photos was carried out on Google Images. To characterize patterns of the structural organization of commensalistic-mutualistic associations between African birds and herbivorous mammals, we used a network analysis approach. We then employed phylogenetically-informed comparative analysis to explore whether features of bird visitation of mammals, i.e., their mean number, mass and species richness per mammal species, are shaped by a combination of host mammal (body mass and herd size) and environmental (habitat openness) characteristics. We found that the association web structure was only weakly nested for commensalistic as well as for mutualistic birds (oxpeckers
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Registered trials
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