Leo M. Khasoha
Ecology and Evolution,
University of Wyoming
Publications
2024
IN PREP: A mechanistic test of a macroecological pattern: quantifying the contribution of dispersal and diet selection to the abundance-occupancy relationship in small mammals
IN PRESS: Spatiotemporal variation in the gut microbiomes of co-occurring wild rodent species
Mammalian gut microbiomes differ within and among hosts. Hosts that occupy a broad range of environments may exhibit greater spatiotemporal variation in their microbiome than those constrained as specialists to narrower subsets of resources or habitats. This can occur if widespread host encounter a variety of ecological conditions that act to diversify their gut microbiomes and/or if generalized host species tend to form large populations that promote …
2023
Symbiotic acacia ants drive nesting behavior by birds in an African savanna
Mutualisms between plants and ants are common features of tropical ecosystems around the globe and can have cascading effects on interactions with the ecological communities in which they occur. In an African savanna, we assessed whether acacia ants influence nest site selection by tree‐nesting birds. Birds selected nest sites in trees inhabited by ant species that vigorously defend against browsing mammals. Future research could address the extent to … PDF
Host phylogeny and functional traits differentiate gut microbiomes in a diverse natural community of small mammals
Differences in the bacterial communities inhabiting mammalian gut microbiomes tend to reflect the phylogenetic relatedness of their hosts, a pattern dubbed phylosymbiosis. Although most research on this pattern has compared the gut microbiomes of host species across biomes, understanding the evolutionary and ecological processes that generate phylosymbiosis requires comparisons across phylogenetic scales and under similar ecological … PDF
Wild herbivores enhance resistance to invasion by exotic cacti in an African savanna
Whether wild herbivores confer biotic resistance to invasion by exotic plants remains a key question in ecology. There is evidence that wild herbivores can impede invasion by exotic plants, but it is unclear whether and how this generalises across ecosystems with varying wild herbivore diversity and functional groups of plants, particularly over long‐term (decadal) time frames. Using data from three long‐term (13‐to 26‐year) exclosure experiments … PDF
2022
Ecological consequences of large herbivore exclusion in an African savanna: 12 years of data from the UHURU experiment
Diverse communities of large mammalian herbivores (LMH), once widespread, are now rare. LMH exert strong direct and indirect effects on community structure and ecosystem functions, and measuring these effects is important for testing ecological theory and for understanding past, current, and future environmental change. This in turn requires long-term experimental manipulations, owing to the slow and often nonlinear responses of …PDF
2021
Experimental evidence that effects of megaherbivores on mesoherbivore space use are influenced by species' traits
The extinction of 80% of megaherbivore (> 1,000 kg) species towards the end of the Pleistocene altered vegetation structure, fire dynamics and nutrient cycling world‐wide. Ecologists have proposed (re) introducing megaherbivores or their ecological analogues to restore lost ecosystem functions and reinforce extant but declining megaherbivore populations. However, the effects of megaherbivores on smaller herbivores are poorly understood. We used long‐term …PDF