浙江天童森林生态系统国家野外科学观测研究站
新闻公告10月24日：Herbivore impacts on grassland plant diversity
作者: 天童站 更新时间: 2020-04-24
主持人：阎恩荣（教授）时间：10月24日13:00 - 14:30
地点： 资源与环境科学学院435室
报告人简介：
Johannes Knops教授长期以来主要从事生物多样性与生态系统功能研究和C和N循环研究，农业生态学、入侵生态学和城市生态学等研究。2005年荣获美国“Sigma Xi杰出青年科学家”称号，2010年被美国内布拉斯加州林肯大学评为“杰出研究者”, 2018年入选由科睿唯安（Clarivate Analytics）公布的2018年度全球高被引学者名单。现为美国生态学会、美国自然科学协会、美国科学促进协会、英国生态学学会和国际植物学会成员和理事，并为Ecology Letter期刊编委，同时又作为Ecology, Ecology Letter, American Naturalist, Journal of Applied Ecology, Journal of Ecology, Applied Soil Ecology等几十家国际期刊的主要审稿人以及美国国家自然基金委的主要评审专家。目前已在Nature、Science、PNAS、Ecology Letter、Ecology和Global Change Biology等国际自然科学和生态学顶级刊物上发表研究论文80多篇，并参与多部专著的编写。
报告内容简介:
One of the most diverse grasslands on Earth are Tibetan alpine meadows, located on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. These meadows average 30 to 40 plant species per 0.25 square meter. We propose that in these alpine meadows, it is interacting herbivores that maintain this high plant diversity. Sheep and yaks preferentially consume tall grasses that are less palatable or accessible to small mammals. While zokors forage belowground and pikas forage aboveground, both preferentially consume species that are unpalatable and often toxic to sheep and yaks. Furthermore, insects, such as caterpillars, often are specialized, consuming species like short-statured sedges. Our hypothesis is that multiple consumers select plants based on different functional traits, counteract the competitive hierarchy among plants, therefore maintaining plant diversity.