Response of leaf traits of common plants in alpine meadow to plateau pika disturbance
Xiao Pan Pang A and Zheng Gang Guo A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Key Laboratory of Grassland Livestock Industry Innovation, Ministry of Agriculture, State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730020, China.
B Corresponding author. Email: guozhg@lzu.edu.cn
The Rangeland Journal 40(1) 39-46 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ17089
Submitted: 3 June 2017 Accepted: 8 November 2017 Published: 12 January 2018
Abstract
Leaf traits have been proven to reflect the adaptation of individual plants to disturbance environments in a grassland ecosystem. A field survey was conducted to investigate the effects of the disturbance intensity of plateau pika on the leaf traits of a dominant (Kobresia pygmaea) and two common plants (Elymus nutans and Anemone rivularis var. flore-minore) in an alpine meadow. This study indicated that the plateau pika disturbance enables the individuals of three plants to exhibit respective plasticity because the three plants had different leaf indices (LI) as the disturbance intensity increased. K. pygmaea, E. nutans and A. rivularis var. flore-minore had high specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry mass content (LDMC), and leaf nitrogen content (LNC) at relatively low, moderate, and high disturbance intensities of plateau pika, respectively. K. pygmaea, E. nutans and A. rivularis var. flore-minore suffered low nutrient stress at low, moderate and high disturbance intensities due to high N : P at corresponding disturbance intensities. These results indicated that K. pygmaea, E. nutans and A. rivularis var. flore-minore grew well at relatively low, moderate, and high disturbance intensity conditions, respectively, which contributed to the improvement of alpine meadows with a higher proportion of E. nutans at a moderate disturbance intensity or the deterioration of alpine meadows with a higher proportion of A. rivularis var. flore-minore at a high disturbance intensity. Our findings suggest that leaf traits are effective tools to explain how small burrowing herbivore disturbances often lead to the improvement or deterioration of alpine meadows under different disturbance intensities.
Additional keywords: alpine meadow, disturbance intensity of plateau pika, dominant and common plants, improvement or deterioration, leaf traits.
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