Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A monogastric organism is comparable to ruminant organisms (which has a four-chambered complex stomach), such as cattle, goats, or sheep. Herbivores with monogastric digestion can digest cellulose in their diets by way of symbiotic gut bacteria. However, their ability to extract energy from cellulose digestion is less efficient than in ruminants.
Hindgut fermentation is a digestive process seen in monogastric herbivores (animals with a simple, single-chambered stomach). Cellulose is digested with the aid of symbiotic microbes including bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. [1] The microbial fermentation occurs in the digestive organs that follow the small intestine: the cecum and large ...
The process of rechewing the cud to further break down plant matter and stimulate digestion is called rumination. [2][3] The word "ruminant" comes from the Latin ruminare, which means "to chew over again". The roughly 200 species of ruminants include both domestic and wild species. [4]
This plays an important role for generalist herbivores that eat a variety of plants. Keystone herbivores keep vegetation populations in check and allow for a greater diversity of both herbivores and plants. [62] When an invasive herbivore or plant enters the system, the balance is thrown off and the diversity can collapse to a monotaxon system ...
Herbivore adaptations to plant defense. Herbivores are dependent on plants for food, and have coevolved mechanisms to obtain this food despite the evolution of a diverse arsenal of plant defenses against herbivory. Herbivore adaptations to plant defense have been likened to "offensive traits" and consist of those traits that allow for increased ...
Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers, and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain. [2][3] Each of the levels within the food chain is a trophic level. [1] In order to more efficiently show the quantity ...
Foxgloves produce toxic chemicals including cardiac and steroidal glycosides, deterring herbivory. Plant defense against herbivory or host-plant resistance (HPR) is a range of adaptations evolved by plants which improve their survival and reproduction by reducing the impact of herbivores. Many plants produce secondary metabolites, known as ...
A nutrient cycle (or ecological recycling) is the movement and exchange of inorganic and organic matter back into the production of matter. Energy flow is a unidirectional and noncyclic pathway, whereas the movement of mineral nutrients is cyclic. Mineral cycles include the carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle, water cycle, phosphorus ...