EEB Graduate Student Chris Dutton publishes paper in Nature Communications on hippos, organic matter, and oxygen depletion in the Mara River

May 16, 2018

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, Chris Dutton and colleagues from the Post Lab at Yale, the Cary Institute, and Michigan State University, show that high levels of organic matter loading by hippos can cause oxygen depletion both locally during low flow and throughout the whole river when high flows flush hippo pools. The research builds upon previous research that documented the magnitude of carbon and nutrient loading by hippos into the Mara river, and the contribution of mass drowning of wildebeest to the ecology of the Mara River.  

Congratulations Chris!

Video of our research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th8yFC6c03c

Yale news story:

https://news.yale.edu/2018/05/16/plural-hippo-well-one-very-dirty-river

Popular press articles on our research:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/excess-hippo-dung-may-be-harming-aquatic-species-across-africa

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/hippos-poop-so-much-that-sometimes-all-the-fish-die/560486/