https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Index ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:10689 50 years of impacts on the thicket shrub community and test their spatial and temporal extent near water. I confirm the vulnerability of thicket to transformation (particularly near water) as the accumulated influences of elephant reduce community composition and structure, and predict that these impacts will eventually bring about landscape-level degradation and a significant loss of biodiversity. Importantly, results show an uneven distribution of effects between elements of this community: from community composition and structure, to the structure of individual canopy species and ecological functioning. While these findings confound our interpretation of the extent of the impacts, it demonstrates the importance of explicitly recognizing biodiversity and heterogeneity for the conservation management of elephant. Finally, I test the consequences of the impacts for coexisting rhinoceros. While I show that this causes rhinoceros to change their foraging strategies in the presence of elephant at high densities, I also show that elephant may facilitate access to food for rhinoceros at reduced densities. These findings indicate the importance of elephant in driving the structure and composition of the thicket shrub community and the consequences of this for coexisting large herbivores. Thus, developing a predictive understanding of the spatial and temporal variations of elephant impacts between elements of biodiversity and the mechanisms driving these changes are key to their management. This implies that the effective conservation management of elephant can only be achieved through the careful, scientific design of monitoring programmes.]]> Wed 12 May 2021 20:53:58 SAST ]]> https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:15089 Wed 12 May 2021 20:25:45 SAST ]]> https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:15103 Wed 12 May 2021 18:22:37 SAST ]]> https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:15066 Wed 12 May 2021 18:16:28 SAST ]]> https://commons.ufh.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:15125 Thu 13 May 2021 06:45:35 SAST ]]>