Asian Eden, Large herbivore ecology in India

30 november 2009

WOTRO researcher Farshid Ahrestani, who defended his PhD on 30 November, investigated the impact of body mass on the biology and ecology of India’s large mammalian herbivore assemblage across different spatial and temporal scales. With the focus on body size, he chose gaur populations as the study's focal species to test body size-based hypotheses. He showed that richness in large herbivore species in India can be explained as a function of plaint available nutrients and moisture.

Ahrestani collected data using field-based studies and an experiment, which was analyzed by using spatial, modelling and statistical methods. He proposes, for the first time, that body mass offers an explanation for why smaller herbivore species show seasonality in annual parturition more often than larger species. Ahrestani found that body mass theory provided an explanation for why species seasonal diets varied and analyzed life history traits of the world’s largest bovid species, Bos gaurus. Furthermore he shows that large herbivore species richness in India can be explained as a function of plaint available nutrients and moisture. This study helps further scientific understanding of large herbivore ecology.

Besides his interest in large herbivore biology, and gaur ecology, Ashrestani is also interested in research focusing at better understanding people’s perceptions towards wildlife: how to increase people’s participation in conservation, and human-wildlife conflict. Therefore, Ashrestani cooperated with various NGO's and conservation organisations during his research. As India remains the last stronghold for most of Asia’s large herbivores, his findings are very important for conservation.

Ashrestani received his PhD at Wageningen University under supervision of Prof. Herbert Prins.