Interannual Consistency of Gross Energy in Red Oak Acorns

Red oak Quercus spp., Subgenus Erythrobalanus acorns are forage for mallards Anas platyrhyncos, wood ducks Aix sponsa, and other wildlife that use bottomland hardwood forests in the southeastern United States. However, annual variation in true metabolizable energy from acorns would affect carrying-capacity estimates of bottomland hardwood forests for wintering ducks. Because gross energy and true metabolizable energy are strongly positively correlated and gross energy is easier to measure than true metabolizable energy, we used gross energy as a surrogate for true metabolizable energy. We measured gross energy of six species of red oak acorns in autumns 2008 and 2009. Within species, mean gross energy of these acorns varied less than 2% between years. The small interannual variation in gross energy of red oak acorns found in this study would have negligible effect on estimates of carrying capacity of bottomland hardwood forests for wintering ducks and other wildlife.