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Green sloths and brown cows: the role of dominant mammalian herbivores in carbon emissions for tropical agro‐ecosystems
Author(s) -
Pauli Jonathan N.,
Carey Cayelan C.,
Peery M. Zachariah
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
mammal review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.574
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1365-2907
pISSN - 0305-1838
DOI - 10.1111/mam.12086
Subject(s) - herbivore , ecosystem , biology , clearance , ecology , sloth , medicine , urology
When Neotropical forests are cleared, there is a rapid switch in the dominant herbivore from wild sloths (suborder Folivora) to domestic cows Bos taurus . We quantified carbon dynamics for these mammals and the ecosystems they inhabit. Because of their low metabolic rates and photosynthetically‐active algae, sloths emit trivial amounts of carbon (12 g C/sloth*day) compared to cows (2.3 kg C/cow*day). In parallel, forests are carbon sinks (−242 g C/m 2 *year) and pastures sources (261 g C/m 2 *year); cows contribute >50% of the net emissions from pastures. For a small farm in Costa Rica, this turnover in herbivores translates into ~166 metric tonnes of additional C emitted annually.