Animal-based techniques for grazing ecology research

Grazing ecologists have available to them a suite of research techniques to measure aspects of plant/animal interactions. This review focuses on animal-based techniques and describes the methods available to tackle questions concerned with intake, foraging behaviour, diet composition and location of free-ranging large mammalian herbivores. The majority of techniques have been developed and tested for agricultural livestock and have proved to be highly reliable and accurate. However, they rely on being able to handle the animal regularly, either in order to administer the measurement protocol or to gather samples or data from the animal. Current interest in the grazing ecology of domestic and wild livestock grazing extensive vegetation systems requires a less hands-on approach to data gathering. Recent developments in microelectronics (e.g. datalogging and radiotelemetry) promise to provide researchers with more accurate data on the foraging strategy of free-ranging animals