Light and ungulate browsing interact in shaping future woody plant diversity through natural regeneration

作者：Ludwig Lettenmaier, Atle Mysterud, Oliver Mitesser, Christian Ammer, Torsten Hothorn, Simone Cesarz, Nico Eisenhauer, Daniel Kraus, Soumen Mallick, Jörg Müller, Kerstin Pierick · 发表于：Journal of Applied Ecology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2664.70211 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies、Seedling growth and survival studies、Fire effects on ecosystems

Abstract Woody species diversity is crucial for the resilience of forests under climate change. The early stages of regeneration, particularly after canopy disturbance, shape the composition of future forest. Light availability, browsing pressure and their interactions should be key drivers of woody species diversity, biomass and density, but are not well understood due to limited experimental setups. We used exclosures in a mixed broadleaf forest with high woody diversity to protect seedlings from browsing by roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus ), the predominant ungulate in Central Europe. In a full‐factorial design, we paired 75 exclosure (fenced) and control (unfenced) plots in both closed canopy stands and experimental gaps. We measured woody regeneration 1 and 4 years after the start of the treatments. Rarefaction‐extrapolation curves revealed that diversity of common (Shannon diversity) woody species was highest in sunny and shaded exclosures (7), compared to sunny (4.5) and shaded (3.5) controls, for species that had outgrown the 130 cm browsing‐susceptible height of roe deer. Stage‐structured matrix models showed that saplings ≤20 cm had the highest probability of reaching >130 cm within 3 years in sunny exclosures (1.51%), followed by sunny controls (0.32%), shaded exclosures (0.27%) and shaded controls (0.07%). Browsing resulted in homogenized woody regeneration, particularly in forest gaps. Increasing light availability did not compensate for diversity loss by brows...