Deer herbivory as an important driver of divergence of ground vegetation communities in temperate forests
Deer herbivory as an important driver of divergence of ground vegetation communities in temperate forests
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鹿食草是温带森林地面植被群落分化的重要驱动因素
DOI：
10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.20431.x
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Z. Kikvidze
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Maki Suzuki;T. Miyashita;H. Kabaya;Keiji Ochiai;M. Asada;Z. Kikvidze
有蹄类食草动物可以从根本上影响景观和区域层面的陆地植被，但其影响从未从元群落的角度进行分析。在这里，我们研究了暖温带地区森林表层植物的集合群落，沿着鹿密度的明显梯度与其他环境因素(森林类型、天空开阔程度和地形湿度)的梯度相互作用。典型对应分析表明，鹿密度是决定物种分布的最重要因素。这些分布符合双向过滤模型，即在低鹿密度时选择竞争种，而在高鹿密度时选择耐草植物，当食性居中时，这两个方向相互抵消。这导致了一个双向嵌套的元群落，在这个群落中，当地物种丰富度在鹿密度的中间水平最高，也符合中间干扰假说。我们的结果表明，草食可能是中生代系统中元群落结构的最重要的驱动因素；这与早期在恶劣环境中进行的研究结果形成了对比，在恶劣的环境中，物种在早期生命阶段通过非生物因素进行的分类减少了包括草食在内的生物相互作用的作用。
Ungulate herbivory can fundamentally affect terrestrial vegetation at the landscape and regional levels, but its impact has never been analyzed from meta-community perspectives. Here, we study a meta-community of forest ground-layer plants in a warm-temperate region along a clear gradient of deer density interplaying with gradients of other environmental factors (forest type, sky openness and topographic wetness). Canonical corresponding analysis showed that deer density was the most important determinant of species distributions. These distributions conformed to a two-directional filtering model, which selects for competitive species at low deer density but favours herbivory-tolerant plants at high deer density, with these two directions counterbalancing each other when herbivory is intermediary. This resulted in a bi-directionally nested meta-community, in which local species richness was highest at intermediate levels of deer density, conforming also to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Our results suggest that herbivory can be the most important driver of meta-community structure in mesic systems; this contrasts with the results of earlier studies conducted in harsh environments, where species sorting by abiotic factors at early life stages reduced the role of biotic interactions, including herbivory.