Feral Pigs
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How They Came to Be

 

< xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" prefix="st1" namespace="">USA Specific

 

Diet

•Opportunistic omnivores

•Green vegetation

•Fruits and grain

•Roots and bulbs (Rooting) can make up the majority of the diet in the areas studied.

 

Problems Observed

Rooting/Grubbing

 

Study 1

•Responses of vegetation to a changing regime of disturbance: effects of feral pigs in a Californian coastal prairie

 

Methods

•Areas with in the prairies or meadows of interest were chosen at random in three different meadows.

•In some cases they were fenced off to study the plant diversity in areas unaffected by grubbing (controls).

•In the other study they were simply monitored in attempts to find a pattern to the grubbing.

 

Findings

•In some cases, grubbing was associated with some physical feature (usually damp ground or seeping water), or with the presence of a plant (e g bulb-beaning species such as Brodiaea, Dtchelostemma, Triteliaea, and Zigadenus)

 

Results

•Transects indicated that pigs annually grubbed an average of 7 4% of the area of the five study meadows (mean calculated by pooling all data.

•In contrast, all native animals together (including moles, pocket gophers, ground squirrels, skunks, and ants) annually disturbed much <1%.

 

Results

 

Study 2

 

•Temporal changes in native and exotic vegetation and soil characteristics following disturbances by feral pigs in a California grassland.

 

Methods

•Patches were chosen which had known disturbance ages.

•The species richness was then observed in these plots which had not been disturbed since.

•Short/ Tall patches

 

Results

 

Proposal

•Standard experiment for each area

References