This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Grazing is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007) |
Grazing generally describes a type of predation in which an herbivore feeds on plants (such as grasses), or more broadly on a multicellular autotrophs (such as kelp). Grazing differs from true predation because the organism being eaten is not killed, and it differs from parasitism as the two organisms do not live together, nor is the grazer necessarily so limited in what it can eat (see generalist and specialist species).
The word "graze" derives from the Old English (OE) grasian, "graze", itself related to OE graes, "grass". For terrestrial animals grazing is normally distinguished from browsing in that grazing is eating grass or other low vegetation, and browsing is eating woody twigs and leaves from trees and shrubs [1]. However, "grazing" is sometimes used to refer to both grazing and browsingcitation needed.
Grazing may be associated with mammals feeding on grasslands, or more specifically livestock on a farm. However, ecologists sometimes use the word in a much broader sense, including any organism that feeds on any other without living in close association with it or ending its life by the act of feeding on it, as described above.[2] An example of a grazer that might seem counterintuitive to the everyday use of the word is a mosquito, which is not a parasite in that it does not form any lasting association with its prey, and is not a true predator in that it does not kill them by this act (although they can act as a vector for fatal diseases such as malaria). In this sense it is the antithesis of parasitoidism, in which an organism (typically the larval stage of a wasp) feeds on another by eating it from within. In that case, the prey is inevitably killed by successful predation, and has an intimate association with its predator, such that its premature death would also see the parasitoid die as well. Use of the term varies however, for example a marine biologist may describe herbivorous sea urchins that feed on kelp as grazers even when they consistently kill the organism by cutting the plant down at the base.
Many smaller, selective herbivores follow grazers because they skim off the highest, tough growth of plants exposing tender shoots.citation needed
See also
References
- ^ Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1976 (6th ed) ISBN 0-19-861122-6. "Graze, verb: 2. Eat growing grass." "Browse, verb: 1. Feed on, crop, (leaves, twigs, scanty vegetation)."
- ^ Begon, M., Townsend, C., Harper, J. (1996) Ecology (Third edition) Blackwell Science, London
3. Lowland Grassland Management Handbook, chapter 5
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
This agriculture-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 31 August 2008, at 15:44.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Grazing".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.