Strong above‐ground impacts of a non‐native ungulate do not cascade to impact below‐ground functioning in a boreal ecosystem

Author:

Swain Makayla1,Leroux Shawn J.1ORCID,Buchkowski Robert2ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Biology Memorial University of Newfoundland St John's Newfoundland Canada

2. Atlantic Forestry Centre Fredericton New Brunswick Canada

Abstract

AbstractExperimental studies across biomes demonstrate that herbivores can have significant effects on ecosystem functioning. Herbivore effects, however, can be highly variable with studies demonstrating positive, neutral or negative relationships between herbivore presence and different components of ecosystems. Mixed effects are especially likely in the soil, where herbivore effects are largely indirect mediated through effects on plants.We conducted a long‐term experiment to disentangle the effects of non‐native moose in boreal forests on plant communities, nutrient cycling, soil composition and soil organism communities.To explore the effect of moose on soils, we conduct separate analyses on the soil organic and mineral horizons. Our data come from 11 paired exclosure‐control plots in eastern and central Newfoundland, Canada that provide insight into 22–25 years of moose herbivory. We fit piecewise structural equations models (SEM) to data for the organic and mineral soil horizons to test different pathways linking moose to above‐ground and below‐ground functioning.The SEMs revealed that moose exclusion had direct positive impacts on adult tree count and an indirect negative impact on shrub percent cover mediated by adult tree count. We detected no significant impact of moose on soil microbial C:N ratio or net nitrogen mineralization in the organic or mineral soil horizon. Soil temperature and moisture, however, was more than twice as variable in the presence (i.e. control) than absence (i.e. exclosure) of moose. Overall, we observed clear impacts of moose on above‐ground forest components with limited indirect effects below‐ground. Even after 22–25 years of exclusion, we did not find any evidence of moose impacts on soil microbial C:N ratio and net nitrogen mineralization.Our long‐term study and mechanistic path analysis demonstrates that soils can be resilient to ungulate herbivore effects despite evidence of strong effects above‐ground. Long‐term studies and analyses such as this one are relatively rare yet critical for reconciling some of the context‐dependency observed across studies of ungulates effects on ecosystem functions. Such studies may be particularly valuable in ecosystems with short growing seasons such as the boreal forest.

Publisher

Wiley

Subject

Animal Science and Zoology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Reference58 articles.

1. Responses of belowground communities to large aboveground herbivores: Meta‐analysis reveals biome‐dependent patterns and critical research gaps

2. Bates D. Maechler M. Bolker B. Walker S. Christensen R. H. B. Singmann H. Dai B. Scheipl F. Grothendieck G. Green P. Fox J. Baueur A. &Krivitsky P. N.(2021).Lme4: Linear mixed‐effects models using “Eigen” and S4 (version 1.1–27.1).https://CRAN.R‐project.org/package=lme4

3. An inter-laboratory comparison of ten different ways of measuring soil microbial biomass C

4. Manipulating ungulate herbivory in temperate and boreal forests: effects on vegetation and invertebrates. A systematic review

Cited by 4 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3