Why do plants need large herbivores?
Channel: Jagad Meru
Date: 2023-01-15

Why do plants need large herbivores?

Of these, plants account for 450 billion tons, 98% of them are terrestrial.

There are only two billion tons left for animals, and half of them are arthropods (mostly insects).

Numbers they say directly: the king of nature is not here man, and land plants, and in their biomass is dominated by trees.

Seem that 1/220 of the animals can not affect plant life, but that`s a mistake.

If no one touches the plants, they slowly return nutrients from their bodies into the soil.

Falling (not y all kinds) leaves are also slow decompose, and constitute only very a small part of the mass of plants.

After its doom plant (and, recall, among they are biomass dominated by trees) often does not completely decompose.

Trunk so well protected during life that mushrooms normally have time to "consume" the most the part of it that is easy to digest – but not all of them.
This is especially true return of phosphorus from plant tissue back into the soil.

mushrooms have enough time for decomposition of trees.

Undecomposed residues are converted into peat, coal, gas or oil – but it's all happening very deeply, that is, it will not return to the world plants in the foreseeable future.

If trees are buried phosphorus with its dead trunks – the soil will become so poor in them that the growth of the same plants will be seriously inhibited.

Large herbivores consume intensively leaves, shoots and more, highlighting with manure and urine nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

They return phosphorus and nitrogen to the soil faster than other mechanisms, for example, decomposition of fallen leaves.

It is creatures larger than a hundred kilograms (where they exist) that absorb the bulk of plant food, and it is impossible to replace them with smaller animals.

Our a species about fifty thousand years ago set up a major experiment – killed all major herbivores on one of the continents, in Australia.

Local soils extremely poor in phosphorus, which is why wild "photosynthetic" there grow a lot slower than in other parts of the world, yes and crops without phosphate fertilizers show a lower yield than on other continents.

Often phosphorus deficiency in Australian soils try to explain a small amount relevant minerals on the continent.

access to similar minerals, but with phosphorus is fine there.
Reason exactly in what was there not so long ago many large herbivores.

In as a result among Australian plants biomass is dominated by eucalyptus, who were there before the man came a rather rare species.

more carefully consume phosphorus (due to of weak stature), but also have an unusual the mechanism for returning this item to Soil: Fire.

pumping water out of the soil: this allows get with it more scarce in Australia's phosphorus and at the same time make the environment around them is drier and more suitable for fire.

It is because of adaptation eucalyptus to dominance using even a small branch of such a fire Wood can flare up just like normal plants are not able to.