PhD project:  Consequences of variation in basal resource quality for the structure of savannah food webs

During my PhD project, I investigate how variation in plant resource quality supports coexistence of differently sized primary consumers across a gradient of rainfall in African savanna and how livestock affect this resource partitioning. In the popular study of dietary niche partitioning among African large herbivores, food resources are mostly resolved taxonomically, i.e., plant species, genus, etc. However, when consuming plants, a herbivore might not consume an entire individual and instead they might selectively eat certain plant organs probably due to higher nutrient content in those organs. Therefore, in my study, I will treat a plant organ as a resource and quantify nutrient content of such resources in my study area, the Serengeti Ecosystem in Tanzania. Then, I will investigate how quantity and quality of such resources vary along a rainfall gradient with/without intensive livestock grazing and how body size of herbivores is associated with quantity and quality of the resources they subsist on.