Response of spatial heterogeneity of plant community height to different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland

doi:10.17521/cjpe.2021.0342

Abstract

Abstract:

Aims Grazing, as one of the important biological driving factors, plays a key role in the spatial heterogeneity of grassland plant community. Large herbivores can affect the spatial heterogeneity of grassland plant community by foraging, trampling and excreting dung. At the same time, plant community height is a key parameter to describe the structure of grassland. However, little attention has been paid to exploring the spatial heterogeneity of plant community height under different herbivore assemblages. Aim to this issue, this work examined the response of the spatial heterogeneity of plant community height to different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland, which is helpful to better understand the importance of grazing in maintaining spatial heterogeneity of grassland plant community and promote grassland animal biodiversity.

Methods An experiment was conducted with four grazing treatments, including no grazing (NG), cattle grazing (CG), sheep grazing (SG) and mixed grazing (MG) of cattle and sheep. We established two perpendicular 15 m transects crossing at the centre point of each plot to reduce the variation caused by environmental gradient. Along the two transects, samples were taken from 0.25 m × 0.25 m quadrates with 0.5 m space interval, and totally 244 sampling points were measured. We used traditional and geostatistical methods to analyze the data from different grazing treatments.

Important findings Results showed that the mean of plant community height in our study plots satisfied the following ranking: SG (38.86 cm) > NG (21.01 cm) > MG (17.29 cm) > CG (13.36 cm). The coefficient of variation of all treatments had moderate level, and the variation range was 37.82%-66.97%, followed by NG > MG > CG > SG. According to the optimal model fitting by the parameters of semi-variance function, NG, MG, CG and SG corresponded to spherical model, exponential model, linear model and linear model respectively, and the structural proportion satisfied MG (82.7%) > NG (80.3%) > SG (40.2%) > CG (39.1%). Furthermore, Kriging interpolation and fractal dimension were used to analyze the spatial pattern of plant community height. It clearly showed NG had a patchy spatial distribution of plant height, MG could maintain the patchy spatial pattern, and CG and SG homogenized the spatial pattern. The fractal dimension value (D₀)of each grazing treatment was close to 2, which indicated the spatial structure of four treatments was good with simple spatial pattern. Thus, mixed grazing of cattle and sheep could maintain plant community structural heterogeneity, while the single grazing of cattle or sheep would reduce the spatial heterogeneity. Our findings shed novel light into management of mixed grazing of cattle and sheep, which should be adopted to maintain the spatial heterogeneity of grassland plant community in Horqin sandy grassland.

Key words: spatial heterogeneity, herbivore assemblages, plant community height, geostatistics, sandy grassland

BAI Yue, LIU Chen, HUANG Yue, DONG Ya-Nan, WANG Lu. Response of spatial heterogeneity of plant community height to different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland[J]. Chin J Plant Ecol, 2022, 46(4): 394-404.

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URL: https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/10.17521/cjpe.2021.0342

https://www.plant-ecology.com/EN/Y2022/V46/I4/394

Figures/Tables 6

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of plant height in Horqin sandy grassland

处理 Treatment	平均值 Mean (cm)	标准误 Standard error (cm)	标准差 Standard deviation (cm)	最小值 Min (cm)	最大值 Max (cm)	变异系数 Coefficient of variation (%)
未放牧 No grazing	21.01	1.80	14.07	3.50	65.50	66.97
混合放牧 Mixed grazing	17.29	1.40	10.94	2.50	46.80	63.27
牛单牧 Cattle grazing	13.36	1.01	7.93	2.60	34.90	59.36
羊单牧 Sheep grazing	36.86	1.78	13.94	12.00	81.40	37.82

Fig. 1 Semi-variogram function of plant height under different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland. CG, cattle grazing; MG, mixed grazing; NG, no grazing; SG, sheep grazing.

Table 2 Analysis of variation function of plant height in Horqin sandy grassland

处理 Treatment	模型 Model	块金值 C₀	基台值 C₀ + C	结构比 C/C₀ + C	变程 A₀	残差平方和 RSS	决定系数 R²
未放牧 No grazing	球状 Spherical	0.209	1.060	0.803	7.070	0.531	0.626
混合放牧 Mixed grazing	指数 Exponential	0.180	1.040	0.827	2.010	0.131	0.551
牛单牧 Cattle grazing	线性 Linear	0.604	0.992	0.391	7.160	0.050	0.772
羊单牧 Sheep grazing	线性 Linear	0.700	1.092	0.402	7.160	0.247	0.359

Fig. 2 Fractal dimension (D0) of plant height under different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland. CG, cattle grazing; MG, mixed grazing; NG, no grazing; SG, sheep grazing.

Fig. 3 2D view of plant height under different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland. CG, cattle grazing; MG, mixed grazing; NG, no grazing; SG, sheep grazing.

Fig. 4 3D view of plant height under different herbivore assemblages in Horqin sandy grassland. CG, cattle grazing; MG, mixed grazing; NG, no grazing; SG, sheep grazing.

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