Grasslands, which constitute almost 40% of the terrestrial biosphere, provide habitat for a
great diversity of animals and plants and contribute to the livelihoods of more than 1 billion …

Large herbivores play unique ecological roles and are disproportionately imperiled by
human activity. As many wild populations dwindle towards extinction, and as interest grows …

BACKGROUND Modern advances in remote-sensing technology are providing
unprecedented opportunities to accurately measure the global distribution of carbon held in …

A major challenge in biology is to understand how phylogeny, diet, and environment shape
the mammalian gut microbiome. Yet most studies of nonhuman microbiomes have relied on …

Wild large herbivores are declining worldwide. Despite extensive use of exclosure
experiments to investigate herbivore impacts, there is little consensus on the effects of wild …

Wild herbivore populations are declining in many African savannas, which is related to
replacement by livestock (mainly cattle) and the loss of megaherbivores. Although some …

Trophic rewilding seeks to rehabilitate degraded ecosystems by repopulating them with
large animals, thereby re-establishing strong top-down interactions. Yet there are very few …

All species within ecosystems contribute to regulating carbon cycling because of their
functional integration into food webs. Yet carbon modeling and accounting still assumes that …

North American grasslands have experienced increased relative abundance of shrubs and
trees over the last 150 yr. Alterations in herbivore composition, abundance, and grazing …

The gut microbiota is critical for host function. Among mammals, host phylogenetic
relatedness and diet are strong drivers of gut microbiota structure, but one factor may be …