ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Megaherbivores modify forest structure and increase carbon stocks through multiple pathways.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Meta-analysis reveals that vertebrates enhance plant litter decomposition at the global scale.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Pooled it
- Congo Basin Carbon Cycle Responses to Global Change.Global change biology · 2026Review
- Timber and trails: Low-intensity selective logging and elephant trails shape seedling dynamics in an Afrotropical forest.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Should elephants graze or browse? The nutritional and functional consequences of dietary variation in a mixed-feeding megaherbivore.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Declines of ebony and ivory are inextricably linked in an African rainforest.Science advances · 2025Article
- Forest elephants modulate their behaviour to adapt to sounds of danger.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Release of tree species diversity follows loss of elephants .from evergreen tropical forests.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The need for carbon finance schemes to tackle overexploitation of tropical forest wildlife.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Blocking then stinging as a case of two-step evolution of defensive cage architectures in herbivore-driven ecosystems.Nature plants · 2024Article
- To avoid carbon degradation in tropical forests, conserve wildlife.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Foraging history of individual elephants using DNA metabarcoding.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Financing conservation by valuing carbon services produced by wild animals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Megaherbivores have pervasive ecological effects. In African rainforests, elephants can increase aboveground carbon, though the mechanisms are unclear. Here, we combine a large unpublished dataset of forest elephant feeding with published browsing preferences totaling nearly 200,000 records covering >800 plant species and with nutritional data for 145 species. Elephants increase carbon stocks by: 1) promoting high wood density trees via preferential browsing on leaves from low wood density species, which are more palatable and digestible; and 2) dispersing seeds of trees that are relatively large and have the highest average wood density among tree guilds based on dispersal mode. Loss of forest elephants could cause an increase in abundance of fast-growing low wood density trees and a 6% to 9% decline in aboveground carbon stocks due to regeneration failure of elephant-dispersed trees. These results demonstrate the importance of megaherbivores for maintaining diverse, high-carbon tropical forests. Successful elephant conservation will contribute to climate mitigation at a globally-relevant scale.
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