Grazing regime alters plant community structure via patch‐scale diversity in semiarid grasslands

作者：Wen-Huai Li, D. Hooper, Liji Wu, J. Bakker, Andros T. Gianuca, X. Ben Wu, F. Taube, Chaonan Wang, Yong-Fei Bai · 发表于：Ecosphere · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1002/ecs2.3547 · 被引用次数：41 · 研究领域：Environmental Science

. Selective grazing of livestock creates lightly and heavily grazed vegetation patches, which together contribute to the whole community in grazed grasslands. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) predicts moderate grazing intensity can increase species diversity. However, grazing patchiness complicates predicted responses to grazing intensity from ecological theory and may in fl uence how vari-ous management regimes affect biodiversity at the whole community scale. We examined effects of management regime and grazing intensity on plant species diversity, community composition, aboveground net primary production (ANPP), and soil compaction. Two management regimes (season-long continuous grazing and grazing and mowing alternated annually) and seven levels of grazing intensity were applied over the past 10 yr. We assessed how α diversity within patches and β diversity across patches contributed to the diversity of the whole plot and how these relationships responded to both grazing intensity and management regime. We further divided β diversity into nestedness and replacement components across lightly and heavily grazed patches within plots. The mixed grazing – mowing regime differed from the continuous grazing regime in that the former had a higher number of palatable species, higher species evenness, and higher Shannon-Wiener diversity, in both lightly and heavily grazed patches and the whole plots, and especially at moderate and high grazing intensities. The continuou...