Barbary macaques live in extreme temperate environments characterized by strongly seasonal resource availability. They are mainly terrestrial while foraging, harvesting food from the herbaceous layer. These monkeys are threatened mainly because of anthropogenic habitat degradation. We studied the adaptive capacities of wild groups of Barbary macaques that lived in different cedar forests underg...

1049-9644/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.biocontrol.2011.06.014 ⇑ Corresponding author. Fax: +1 517 353 5598. E-mail address: [email protected] (B.P. Werling). Cultivation of biofuel crops could change agricultural landscapes, affecting natural enemies at multiple scales. We sampled five natural enemy families with sticky cards in three model biofuel habitats (corn, switch...

Wild herbivores and livestock share the majority of rangelands worldwide, yet few controlled experiments have addressed their individual, additive, and interactive impacts on ecosystem function. While ungulate herbivores generally reduce standing biomass, their effects on aboveground net primary production (ANPP) can vary by spatial and temporal context, intensity of herbivory, and herbivore id...

Knowledge of the relationship between stocking rate or grazing intensity and plant production is fundamental to the sustainable management of rangelands. The general management paradigm is that plant production declines as stocking rate increases. Our objective was to determine the impact of stocking rate on herbaceous production of a sand sagebrush (Artemisia filifolia Torr.)grassland. Stockin...

Livestock grazing effects on herbaceous vegetation diversity and ecosystem function are summarized from peer-reviewed literature. Ecosystem responses are linked to grazing management via residual dry matter (RDM), which is alternatively called litter or mulch. Residual dry matter is the dead herbaceous aboveground biomass remaining on a site at the time of autumn germination in annual grassland...

Megaherbivores (>1000 kg) are critical for ecosystem health and function, but face population collapse and extinction globally. The future of these megaherbivore-impoverished ecosystems is difficult to predict, though many studies have demonstrated increasing representation of C3 woody plants. These studies rely on direct observational data, however, and tools for assessing decadal-scale change...

Grassland and shrub-steppe ecosystems are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities. Loss of native habitats may negatively impact important small mammal prey species. Little information, however, is available on the impact of habitat variability on density of small mammal prey species at broad spatial scales. We examined the relationship between small mammal density and remotely-sens...

Understanding the structure and dynamics of plant communities in water-limited systems often calls for the identification of ecosystem engineers--key species that modify the landscape, redistribute resources and facilitate the growth of other species. Shrubs are excellent examples; they self-organize to form patterns of mesic patches which provide habitats for herbaceous species. In this paper ...

In the present study, the phenological and quantitative changes in the pollen seasons between 1973 and 2013 in the Stockholm region of Sweden were studied for nine types of pollen (hazel, alder, elm, birch, oak, grass, mugwort, willow and pine). Linear regression models were used to estimate the long term trends in duration, start- and end-dates, peak-values and the yearly accumulated pollen su...

This aim of this study was to distinguish grasslands from forests in southern Brazil by analyzing Poaceae pollen grains. Through light microscopy analysis, we measured the size of the pollen grain, pore, and annulus from 68 species of Rio Grande do Sul. Measurements were recorded of 10 forest species and 58 grassland species, representing all tribes of the Poaceae in Rio Grande do Sul. We measu...