Study on alkane patterns of grassland species from the Patagonian steppe

摘要

A reliable estimation of diet composition and forage intake in grazing animals under extensive management in the great rangelands of the world is a relevant aspect for production and conservation programmes.Grassland species from the Patagonian steppe of Argentina-where sheep production is a major enterprise-would differ in their preference by sheep, but studies are scarce and mostly restricted to a few conspicuous species using visual or micro‐histological techniques ( Pelliza et al.,1997).Differences in alkane patterns between species or plant parts may be combined with the preceding techniques to aid in the estimation of diet composition (Mayes and Dove,2000).The aim of this work was to explore these differences on some main grazed species using Principal Component Analysis (PCA).