Developing common protocols to measure tundra herbivory across spatial scales

Abstract

Understanding and predicting large-scale ecological responses to global environmental change requires comparative studies across geographic scales with coordinated efforts and standardized methodologies. We designed, applied and assessed standardized protocols to measure tundra herbivory at three spatial scales: plot, site (habitat), and study area (landscape). The plot and site-level protocols were tested in the field during summers 2014-2015 at eleven sites, nine of them comprising warming experimental plots included in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). The study area protocols were assessed during 2014-2018 at 24 study areas across the Arctic. Our protocols provide comparable and easy-to-implement methods for assessing the intensity of invertebrate herbivory within ITEX plots and for characterizing vertebrate herbivore communities at larger spatial scales. We discuss methodological constraints and make recommendations for how these protocols can be used and how sampling effort can be optimized to obtain comparable estimates of herbivory, both at ITEX sites and at large landscape scales. The application of these protocols across the tundra biome will allow characterizing and comparing herbivore communities across tundra sites and at ecologically relevant spatial scales, providing an important step towards a better understanding of tundra ecosystem responses to large-scale environmental change.

Location of studies and evidence of effects of herbivory on Arctic vegetation: a systematic map

“…Coordinated experiments that use standardized methodologies across broad geographical ranges can partly help overcome this problem [81]. Harmonizing research efforts through the development and use of common protocols will help make results of different studies more comparable, allowing for more robust generalizations across sites and plant-herbivore systems [82,83]. However, the implementation of such protocols at existing study sites alone will not solve the issue of some ecological contexts being underrepresented, given the current spatial distribution of Arctic research documented by this study and others [27].…”

Microclimatic Warming Leads to a Decrease in Species and Growth Form Diversity: Insights From a Tropical Alpine Grassland

“…This contrasts with results reported by Calderón-Loor et al (2020) in the same páramos of the Yanacocha Reserve for the period 2012-2014 in which AGB increased, despite showing similar values of AGB to ours for 2014. Finally, the higher amount of AGB in exclusion plots than OTCs shows that the OTCs did not entirely exclude herbivory by small mammals, as was also observed by Barrio et al (2021). However, herbivory intensity is dependent on site and OTC design.…”

Herbivores in Arctic ecosystems: Effects of climate change and implications for carbon and nutrient cycling

“…4,6 Increasing appreciation that terrestrial organisms can have wide-ranging impacts on C and nutrient cycling [7][8][9] is also motivating new studies on these processes with vertebrates and invertebrates across the Arctic. [10][11][12][13] At the same time, arctic ecosystems and the organisms within them are responding to rapid and dramatic climate change. Although temperatures are increasing globally, the Arctic is warming notably faster than many other areas.…”