Guanacos? and domestic livestock?s summer diets comparison in ecotone of ?Tierra del Fuego? (Argentina)

ARRIAGA M.O.; ESCOBAR, J.; MORETTO, A. S.; STAMPACCHIO, M. L; FERNANDEZ PEPI M. G; ALVARENGA, E. C.; ZUCOL A. F.

Biodiversity International Journal

MedCrave Group

Año: 2018 vol. 2 p. 425 - 431

At present, it is believed that the population of guanacos has increased in the ?IslaGrande de Tierra del Fuego?, arising a conflict with livestock and forestry activities.The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of the guanaco?s food resources, takinginto account the presence of different types of domestic livestock, in order to providea tool which will enable the evaluation of environmental management projects. Weconducted the study in different areas, considering the presence/absence of domesticlivestock and of guanaco. The diet was analyzed by identifying botanical remainspresent in the pretreated feces. The relative frequencies of ingested taxa were obtainedand analyzed according to their functional groups, being the soft, herbaceous andgraminoid grasses the most consumed, where the soft grasses were the most frequentlyingested. Tree species only appear in diets of guanacos, in a low frequency, comparedto other forms of life. In the case of soft grasses, forbs and Graminoides, the dietsdiffer according to ingested species and intake frequency. These results allow us toestablish that the guanaco selects the items to be consumed, changing its diet based onthe presence of other herbivores, and has a trophic overlap with domestic livestock,mainly with sheep.