Deer impact seedbanks and plant communities over 18 years of post-agricultural succession.

ABSTRACT: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are known to alter the composition of plant communities and the course of secondary succession. We present 18 years of data from a long-term deer exclosure experiment near Ithaca, NY, USA, to evaluate seedbank dynamics and the resulting aboveground community. Seedbank data were collected annually from 2005 to 2021 through a germination assay in which 280,674 emerged seedlings were identified. Aboveground data were collected from 2019 to 2022. Across all years, deer increased Shannon-Wiener diversity of seeds germinated from the soil by 8% relative to exclosure plots but did not affect abundance or species richness. Deer altered seedbank composition but not the percentage of biennial/perennial (vs. annual) or native (vs. non-native) species in the

SUBMITTER: Westbrook AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12725539 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature