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Gorongosa Dataset Tracks 37 Nyalas Through a Decade of Ecosystem Recovery

Male nyala standing in woodland in Maputo National Park
Research · Ecology

A peer-reviewed data paper published in 2026 has brought together more than a decade of movement and diet records from large herbivores in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. Nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) had the third-largest collar sample among the seven telemetry species: 37 individuals, after Cape bushbuck with 103 and greater kudu with 80. The nyalas were tracked for a median of 306 days, with a median of 6,789 recorded locations per animal.

The wider telemetry dataset covers 277 herbivores from seven species and spans work conducted between 2013 and 2025. In addition to Cape bushbuck, greater kudu and nyala, it includes 22 waterbuck, 18 African savanna elephants, 10 common eland and seven plains zebra. This period coincided with the continuing restoration of Gorongosa’s large-mammal community after severe losses during Mozambique’s civil war, as well as years with very different rainfall conditions and the return of several locally extinct predators from 2018 onwards.

Movement records were paired with body and diet data

The researchers combined movement records with additional biological information. For 295 animals handled during the project, the dataset includes measurements such as body length, chest girth and weight, together with reproductive status, indicators of nutritional condition and information on the animals’ fate when known.

Diet was documented on an even broader scale. DNA metabarcoding was used to identify plants in 3,785 faecal samples from 27 mammal species. Across those samples, the team recorded 516 food-plant taxa belonging to at least 87 plant families. The resulting material can therefore be used to study not only where herbivores moved, but also what they ate and how those patterns changed while the ecosystem was being rebuilt.

A data resource rather than a single-effect study

The paper is primarily a data publication rather than a study centred on one single ecological effect. The long-term records are available in a structured form for future analyses of movement, diet, habitat selection, species interactions and community recovery. The filtered data are openly available through the article’s supplementary material and Dryad, while movement data are also deposited in Movebank.

For nyala, the unusually detailed tracking series provides a substantial record of how individuals used a recovering savanna ecosystem during a period of major ecological change. The authors present the wider dataset as a resource for studying how large-herbivore communities reassemble when populations, predators and environmental conditions change over time.

Sources and image credit

  1. Hutchinson, M. C., Walker, R. H., Abraham, J. O., Becker, J. A., Gonçalves, D. D., Nutter, C. M., Pansu, J., Phillips, E. M., Potter, A. B., Soares Tenente, B., Stalmans, M. E., Long, R. A., & Pringle, R. M. (2026). Ecology of community reassembly: Movements and diets of megafauna during a decade of restoration in Mozambique. Ecology, 107(4), e70386. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70386Primary peer-reviewed open-access data paper, first published 12 April 2026.
  2. Hutchinson, M. C., Walker, R. H., Abraham, J. O., Becker, J. A., Gonçalves, D. D., Nutter, C. M., Pansu, J., Phillips, E. M., Potter, A. B., Soares Tenente, B., Stalmans, M. E., Long, R. A., & Pringle, R. M. (2026). Data from: Ecology of community reassembly: Movements and diets of megafauna during a decade of restoration in Mozambique [Data set]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m905qfv85Primary open data repository accompanying the article.

Image: Charles J. Sharp — male nyala in Maputo National Park, Mozambique; representative image, not from Gorongosa. Source: Wikimedia Commons. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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Ecology

SPECIES IN THIS STORY

Species in this story

Nyala Tragelaphus angasii Explore species Cape Bushbuck Tragelaphus sylvaticus Explore species Greater Kudu Tragelaphus strepsiceros Explore species Waterbuck Kobus ellipsiprymnus Explore species Plains Zebra Equus quagga Explore species African Bush Elephant Loxodonta africana Explore species

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