## 4 Discussion  
This study provides empirical data concerning the selection of fodder plants as well as potential preferences in habitat use by European bison and [PERSON]'s horses living under similar conditions in a rewilding area. European bison showed seasonal changes in trends of diet selection. In contrast, [PERSON]'s horses showed strong selection for grasses year-round, supplemented with sedges and herbs and some woody material in winter. [PERSON]'s horses selected forage plants in open habitats throughout the year, while European bison used open habitats and additionally forest habitats in all seasons. Horses are generally known as monocotyledon specialists [67; 68; 69; 70; 71; 72; 73; 74] and inhabit a wide range of different open habitat types [2; 75; 76; 77; 78]. In our study, [PERSON]'s horses were foraging more on grasses than on browse during all seasons. Therefore, they would be categorized as grazers, similar to the classification of [PERSON] [79]. Their strong preference for dry grasslands is probably because of the evolutionary history of _E. ferrous_ in Eurasian steppes [80]. The results of our study are comparable to those of [PERSON] et al. [73], where horses did not show seasonal variation in diet preferences either. The use of bark by equids occurs rarely and not to the extent that European bison are debarking [33]. In our study, we observed some use of oak bark by horses, but only in winter. European bison preferred fresh and wet meadows with sedges and rushes as key forage species, in association with herbs and grasses during spring, summer, and autumn. Additionally, they moved into forest habitats to forage on foliage, especially on leaves of oak. On the basis of the distribution of preferred forage plants, European bison are expected to prefer openland habitats in spring. Then, most forage plants are of high quality owing to low fibre content and high digestibility [81; 82; 83]. During autumn, European bison started to broaden their diet. This led to the potential use of a wide range of habitats within the study area. During winter, the diet of European bison was dominated by woody material and they predominantly used forested habitats. The use of woody material and debarking in winter by European bison is a well-known phenomenon [14; 33; 84]. A larger  
Figure 7: Spatially explicit representation of potential habitat preferences of European bison and [PERSON]’s horses according to the distribution of selected forage plants in the core area of the Doeberitzer Heide (0—rejected, 1—seldom, 3—highest preference) on the basis of forest habitat distribution. Observations about plant consumption are aggregated over specific habitat types and plotted delineated in seasonal periods. Mapped potential habitat preferences can contain various forage preference categories. Therefore, the scale of habitat preference is continuous. consumption of woody shrubs in autumn when graminoids are scarce was also observed for American bison (_Bison bison_) in a study by [PERSON] et al. [35]. Both [PERSON] and [PERSON] [85] and [PERSON] and [PERSON] [86] reported an increased use of shrubs by American bison and Wood bison (_Bison bison athabascae_) due to limited availability of sedges and rushes in winter. Traditionally, the habitat for European bison is considered to be forest because the last wild living individuals inhabited forests [14; 87]. However, several recently published studies agree that European bison tend to use open habitats preferentially [24; 33; 79; 88; 89; 90; 91]. The increasing use of woody material in autumn and winter by the observed European bison could be a result of limited availability of other suitable fodder. Preferred plants might have already been heavily grazed in the study area as habitats containing preferred forage cover less than 1.2% of the total core area (fresh and wet meadows). Animals were thus forced to use different forages. Additionally, there were more bison than horses in the study area and the grazing pressure in preferred habitats was higher.