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Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production

Herbivory is a major energy transfer within ecosystems; an open question is under what circumstances it can stimulate aboveground seasonal primary production. Despite multiple field demonstrations, past theory considered herbivory as a continuous process and found stimulation of seasonal production...

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Autores principales: Ritchie, Mark E., Penner, Jacob F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7319133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32607153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6274
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author Ritchie, Mark E.
Penner, Jacob F.
author_facet Ritchie, Mark E.
Penner, Jacob F.
author_sort Ritchie, Mark E.
collection PubMed
description Herbivory is a major energy transfer within ecosystems; an open question is under what circumstances it can stimulate aboveground seasonal primary production. Despite multiple field demonstrations, past theory considered herbivory as a continuous process and found stimulation of seasonal production to be unlikely. Here, we report a new theoretical model that explores the consequences of discrete herbivory events, or episodes, separated in time. We discovered that negative density (biomass) dependence of plant growth, such as might be expected from resource limitation of plant growth, favors stimulation of seasonal production by infrequent herbivory events under a wide range of herbivory intensities and maximum plant relative growth rates. Results converge to those of previous models under repeated, short‐interval herbivory, which generally reduces seasonal production. Model parameters were estimated with new and previous data from the Serengeti ecosystem. Patterns of observed frequent and large magnitude stimulated production in these data agreed generally with those predicted by the episodic herbivory model. The model thus may provide a new framework for evaluating the sustainability and impact of herbivory.
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spelling pubmed-73191332020-06-29 Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production Ritchie, Mark E. Penner, Jacob F. Ecol Evol Original Research Herbivory is a major energy transfer within ecosystems; an open question is under what circumstances it can stimulate aboveground seasonal primary production. Despite multiple field demonstrations, past theory considered herbivory as a continuous process and found stimulation of seasonal production to be unlikely. Here, we report a new theoretical model that explores the consequences of discrete herbivory events, or episodes, separated in time. We discovered that negative density (biomass) dependence of plant growth, such as might be expected from resource limitation of plant growth, favors stimulation of seasonal production by infrequent herbivory events under a wide range of herbivory intensities and maximum plant relative growth rates. Results converge to those of previous models under repeated, short‐interval herbivory, which generally reduces seasonal production. Model parameters were estimated with new and previous data from the Serengeti ecosystem. Patterns of observed frequent and large magnitude stimulated production in these data agreed generally with those predicted by the episodic herbivory model. The model thus may provide a new framework for evaluating the sustainability and impact of herbivory. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7319133/ /pubmed/32607153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6274 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Ritchie, Mark E.
Penner, Jacob F.
Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title_full Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title_fullStr Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title_full_unstemmed Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title_short Episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
title_sort episodic herbivory, plant density dependence, and stimulation of aboveground plant production
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7319133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32607153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6274
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