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This is Scientific Americans' 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.

Large mammals can be lost from a particular place, by being hunted or by the destruction of their habitat,

and the loss of these big animals can greatly affect the rest of their ecosystem.

Take elephants. They can leave deep footprints in soil. After it rains, each footprint becomes a tiny pond, which becomes a home to a variety of invertebrates. No elephants means no homes for those critters. So while it's well known that the loss of large animals can mean bad news, Just how pervasive those impacts can be still remains unclear.

I spent a lot of time when I was there in these heavily hunted forests and in these pristine

forests, well, relatively pristine, they weren't hunted.

They were pretty protected and removed.

And just walking around, I was noticing that there is a visual difference

in the amount of understory vegetation in these areas where the elephants and other large

animals like forest buffalo are hunted out. There was a lot more vegetation in the understory

compared to deep within like the park where it was more protected and remote.

It was a lot easier to walk around.

Rice University biologist Terace Lamperty, who conducted fieldwork in Gabon in West Central

Africa.

If overhunting is allowing this vegetation to be released from herbivory and trampling. I was imagining

that would probably do a lot to the understory environment and the microclimate that

invertebrates are exposed to. So Lampurgy and her team compared the understory vegetation

...