Climate Change and Herbivores: Forty Years in a Bunchgrass Prairie.

ABSTRACT: Wild herbivore responses to anthropogenic climate change are often projected to be habitat and geographic range shifts as warmer conditions reduce the quantity and nutritional quality of forage plants, which makes species presence/absence a focus. Since 1978, herbivore abundances at the National Bison Range, MT, USA, were measured for grasshoppers (catch-effort), microtine rodents (runway density), and ungulates (drives and round-ups), along with climate and vegetation quantity (biomass) and quality (nitrogen content and chemical solubility related to digestibility). Counter to expectation with warming and drying, forage biomass increased as grass biomass increased more than dicot biomass decreased, and forage quality (solubility) increased. Consequently, herbivores that consume a grass di

SUBMITTER: Belovsky GE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11429164 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature