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Plant Sciences Commons

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Forest Sciences

Utah State University

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

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Full-Text Articles in Plant Sciences

Short-Term Regeneration Dynamics Of Wyoming Big Sagebrush At Two Sites In Northern Utah, Sara J. Germain, Rebecca K. Mann, Thomas A. Monaco, Kari E. Veblen Apr 2018

Short-Term Regeneration Dynamics Of Wyoming Big Sagebrush At Two Sites In Northern Utah, Sara J. Germain, Rebecca K. Mann, Thomas A. Monaco, Kari E. Veblen

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis) is a widespread shrub across the western United States, and there is great interest among scientists and land managers in its ecology and conservation, particularly with regard to maintaining structural heterogeneity of sagebrush stands for wildlife habitat and livestock forage. Yet little is known about its short-term regeneration dynamics and the implications of those dynamics for changes in stand structure. We examined changes among sagebrush size classes across 3 years, as well as emergence of sagebrush from seed bank and seed rain samples at 2 sagebrush shrub land sites in northern …


Most Soil Trophic Guilds Increase Plant Growth: A Meta-Analytical Review, Andrew Kulmatiski, Andrew Anderson-Smith, Karen H. Beard, Stephen Doucette-Riise, Michael Mazzacavallo, Nicole E. Nolan, Ricardo A. Ramirez, John R. Stevens Jul 2014

Most Soil Trophic Guilds Increase Plant Growth: A Meta-Analytical Review, Andrew Kulmatiski, Andrew Anderson-Smith, Karen H. Beard, Stephen Doucette-Riise, Michael Mazzacavallo, Nicole E. Nolan, Ricardo A. Ramirez, John R. Stevens

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Trophic cascades are important drivers of plant and animal abundances in aquatic and aboveground systems, but in soils trophic cascades have been thought to be of limited importance due to omnivory and other factors. Here we use a meta-analysis of 215 studies with 1526 experiments that measured plant growth responses to additions or removals of soil organisms to test how different soil trophic levels affect plant growth. Consistent with the trophic cascade hypothesis, we found that herbivores and plant pathogens (henceforth pests) decreased plant growth and that predators of pests increased plant growth. The magnitude of this trophic cascade was …