Fungal-mediated mortality explains the different effects of dung leachates on the germination response of grazing increaser and decreaser species
Entity
UAM. Departamento de EcologíaPublisher
ElsevierDate
2016-01-01Citation
10.1016/j.actao.2015.12.004
Acta Oecologica 70 (2016): 74-78
ISSN
1146-609X (print); 1873-6238 (online)DOI
10.1016/j.actao.2015.12.004Funded by
Financial support was received from the Spanish MINECO (Project CGL2014- 53789-R) and the Madrid Regional Government (Project REMEDINAL3). CPC was supported by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (TANDEM; project id. 626392)Project
Gobierno de España. CGL2014- 53789-R; Comunidad de Madrid. S2013/MAE-2719/REMEDINAL3; info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/626392Editor's Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actao.2015.12.004Subjects
Dung; Germination; Grasslands; Herbivory; Pathogen; Fungicide; Biología y Biomedicina / Biología; BotánicaRights
© 2015 Elsevier Masson SASAbstract
Depending on their response to grazing, grassland species can be categorized as grazing increasers or decreasers. Grazing by livestock includes several different activities that can impact species differently. Recent evidence suggest that one of these actions, dung deposition, can reduce the germinative performance of decreaser species, thus favouring increasers. The present study tested the hypothesis that decreased germinative success of decreaser species is caused by a greater activity of fungal pathogens under the influence of dung leachates. We performed a phytotron experiment analysing the germination and fungal infections of fourteen species from Mediterranean grasslands. Species were grouped into phylogenetically-related pairs, composed of an increaser and a decreaser species. Seeds of each species were germinated under four different treatments (control, dung leachate addition, fungicide addition and dung leachate and fungicide addition), and the differences in germination percentage, germination speed and infection rate between each increaser species and its decreaser counterpart were analysed. Decreaser species were more affected by mortality than increaser ones, and these differences were higher under the presence of dung leachates. The differences in germinative performance after excluding the effect of seed mortality did not differ between treatments, showing that the main mechanism by which dung leachates favour increaser species is through increased mortality of the seeds of decreaser species. Drastic reductions in the number of dead seeds in the treatments including fungicide addition further revealed that fungal pathogens are responsible for these differences between species with different grazing response. The different vulnerabilities of increaser and decreaser species to the increased activity of fungal pathogens under the presence of dung leachates seems the main reason behind the differential effect of these leachates on species with different grazing response
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Google Scholar:Carmona, Carlos P.
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Navarro, Elena
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Peco Vázquez, Begoña
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