<
https://theconversation.com/animals-keep-eating-precious-plants-we-used-smell-misinformation-to-keep-them-away-215454>
"In places where we need to protect valuable plants – whether for ecological or
economic reasons – local herbivores can cause significant damage.
Current solutions often involve killing the problem animals. But this is
increasingly unacceptable due to animal welfare concerns and social pressures.
Physical barriers such as fences can be expensive, and aren’t always practical.
We need other options.
Recently, our team discovered that herbivores – plant-eating mammals –
primarily use their sense of smell to tell which plants they want to eat or
avoid.
In our study published today in
Nature Ecology & Evolution, we show how we
can use this reliance on smell to nudge wallabies away from vulnerable native
tree seedlings. We artificially created and deployed the key smells of a shrub
wallabies avoid."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
