Using in situ mesocosm experiments, we compared grazing rates, food-selection patterns and nutrient mineralization rates of a daphniid cladoceran and a diaptomid copepod to determine their infl uence on phytoplankton composition and the prevalence of N-fi xing cyanobacteria. We show that grazing and nutrient mineralization may act synergistically within a grazer taxon. Cladocerans exhibited non...

It has been proposed that aridity and grazing are convergent selective forces: each one selects for traits conferring resistance to both. However, this conceptual model has not yet been experimentally validated. The aim of this work was to experimentally evaluate the effect of aridity and grazing, as selective forces, on drought and grazing resistance of populations of Trichloris crinita, a nat...

An understanding of the factors controlling plant community composition will allow improved prediction of the responses of plant communities to natural and anthropogenic environmental change. Using monitoring data from 1980 to 2009, we quantified the changes in community composition in Leymus chinensis and Stipa grandis dominated grasslands in Inner Mongolia under long-term grazing-exclusion an...

The control of feed intake by ruminants is complex, and developing a cohesive theory of intake control in ruminants continues to be a challenge. Because our understanding of factors that regulate intake by cattle is inadequate, predicting feed intake, even under the best of circumstances, is difficult. In grazing cattle, this difficulty is exacerbated by additional influences that can sway basi...

Rotational grazing is commonly assumed to improve livestock distribution compared to continuous grazing, but little evidence supports this contention. Research was conducted on the effects of rotational grazing (RG) compared to continuous grazing (CC) on the preference of cattle for plant communities. Diffeant livestock densitiea in the RG treatments were created by varying the size of paddocka...

Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

This paper reviews current knowledge of the social behavior of grazing beef cattle and discusses how that knowledge can be applied to rangeland cattle management. Cattle herds are composed of social subgroups that influence grazing distribution on rangeland. Grazing distribution is, in part, a learned response; therefore, management strategies that alter the social composition and structure of ...