Overall grazing tolerance index (overall GTI) is not an ideal predictor for describing a single-species tolerance to grazing.

ABSTRACT: Plants' pattern of compensatory growth is often used to intuitively estimate their grazing tolerance. However, this tolerance is sometimes measured by the overall grazing tolerance index (overall GTI), which assumes that tolerance is a multivariate linear function of various underlying mechanisms. Because the interaction among mechanisms is not independent, the grazing tolerance expression based on overall GTI may be inconsistent with that based on compensatory growth. Through a manipulative field experiment from 2007 to 2012, we measured the responses of 12 traits of Elymus nutans to clipping under different resource availabilities in an alpine meadow and explored the compensatory aboveground biomass and the overall GTI to assess the possible differences between the two expressions

SUBMITTER: Zhang L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6468136 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature