The effects of grazing on foliar trait diversity and niche differentiation in Tibetan alpine meadows

Niche differentiation arising in functional trait diversity is expected to increase the potential for species coexistence, but empirical evidence for these relationships is sparse. We test whether grazing increases the functional diversity of leaf traits and niche differentiation in phosphorus limited Tibetan alpine meadows. We measured five traits in the leaf economic spectrum (LES; LC, leaf carbon concentration; LN, leaf nitrogen concentration; LP, leaf phosphorus concentration; SLA, specific leaf area; and LDMC, leaf dry matter content) for all species occurring in grazed and ungrazed plots at each of five sites. By comparing indicators of the fundamental and realized niches of co-occurring plants in both grazed and ungrazed plots, we quantified a grazing-mediated competitive effect on trait divergence and convergence. This trait response reflects the relative importance of niche differentiation and competitive exclusion in response to grazing. We found that while grazing induced LP divergence, both LC...

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Ecosphere

• Publication date

  2015-09-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1890/ES14-00547.1
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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