Description
Soil organisms have been reported as important drivers of plant community structure,composition and dynamics. The soil environment is highly spatially structured, and therefore the specific relationship between some soil organisms and plant species are expected to result in small-scale heterogeneity in plant community composition as well. However, in natural systems small-scale plant community composition is often reported to be homogenized in the presence of large vertebrate grazers. Therefore, we hypothesize that large aboveground herbivores overrule the effect of soil organisms and that the effect of soil biota on plant species composition becomes apparent in the absence of large aboveground grazers only. On the Dutch Wadden Sea island Schiermonnikoog we set up a field experiment to investigate the interaction between soil organisms and aboveground vertebrate herbivores. We studied the influence of subterranean yellow meadow ants (Lasius flavus) and aboveground herbivores on small scale plant community composition in a salt marsh with and without cattle grazing. We found that plant community composition was strongly affected by cattle grazing. In the presence of cattle plant community composition was not significantly changed by yellow meadow ants, while in the absence of cattle we found a complete shift in plant community composition on and off ant mounds. We conclude that yellow meadow ants alter plant community composition in the absence of cattle only and thus that large grazers may overrule the effect of soil organisms on plant community composition.| Periode | 11-feb.-2009 |
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| Evenementstitel | Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2009 |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Conferentienummer | 2 |
| Organisator | Netherlands Ecological Research Network (NERN) |
| Locatie | Lunteren, NetherlandsToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | International |