Fig 1.
The two study areas in the Mongolian Gobi.
The ca. 9,000 km2 khulan distribution core in the Dzungarian Gobi (DG) does not include any villages and no herder camps are present in summer. The ca. 56,000 km2 khulan distribution core in the South Gobi Region (SGR) contain several settlements and herder camps are present year-round. Figure generated in ArcGIS 10.7.1 (ESRI, Redland, CA, USA, http://www.esri.com/) using NASA SRTM Digital Elevation 30m data for background.
Table 1.
Characterization of the two study areas at the western and eastern end of the khulan range in the Mongolian Gobi.
Fig 2.
Isotope profiles of khulan tail hair.
Sequential, temporally explicit ™13Cdiet, ™2Hhair profiles of khulan tail hair and time-matched 16-day NDVI values. The fraction of C4 biomass in the diets takes into account the isotopic variability of the C3 and C4 end members used in the mixing model (mean ™13C ± 1σ, depicted with solid and dashed line, respectively). Pink and gray stripes depict summer and winter, respectively.
Table 2.
Relative consumption of C4 plants of khulan in winter from two different regions in the Mongolian Gobi based on different sample types and analysis methods.
Fig 3.
Khulan winter diet based on barcoding.
Frequency of occurrence and relative read abundance of plant genera identified by barcoding in 66 kulan fecal samples (42 from Dzungarian Gobi and 24 from the South Gobi Region) from winter in the two study areas in the Mongolian Gobi. Genera appear clockwise in the pie diagram in the order they appear in the legend.? = 2 genera not recorded for the Gobi and?? = 1 genera not recorded for Mongolia (see methods for details). Photos: Dzungarian Gobi N. Altansukh, South Gobi Region: Camera collar.
Fig 4.
Diet similarity of individual fecal samples.
The comparison is based on read abundance of plant genera (>0.5% of all sequence reads in each sample) in 66 kulan feces from winter in the two study area in the Mongolian Gobi. Genera with color codes in the legend show the order in which they appear in the bar, from bottom to top. Color ranges codes match family colors in previous figures: blue = Asteraceae, green = Amaranthaceae, orange = Poaceae, red = Tamaricaceae, grey = remaining rare families (Geraniaceae, Peganiaceae, Zygophyllaceae), black: sum of all remaining genera reads which fell under the <0.5% threshold (for details see method section). Location = sample location (see Fig 1 for map).
Table 3.
Percentage representation of all genera and those with a C4 photosynthetic pathway identified with barcoding combined by family.