Herbivores generally have strong structural and compositional effects on vegetation, which in turn determines the plant forage species available. We investigated how selected large mammalian herbivore assemblages use and alter herbaceous vegetation structure and composition in a southern African savanna in and adjacent to the Kruger National Park, South Africa. We compared mixed and mono-specif...

Endophytic bacteria are critical for plant growth and health. However, compositional and functional responses of bacterial endophyte communities towards agricultural practices are still poorly understood. Hence, we analyzed the influence of fertilizer application and mowing frequency on bacterial endophytes in three agriculturally important grass species. For this purpose, we examined bacterial...

Human activities release tremendous amounts of nitrogenous compounds into the atmosphere. Wet and dry deposition distributes this airborne nitrogen (N) on otherwise pristine ecosystems. This eutrophication process significantly alters the species composition of native grasslands; generally a few nitrophilic plant species become dominant while many other species disappear. The functional equilib...

We examined the nutritive value of common grass species in the semi-arid rangelands of Borana in southern Ethiopia using local experience based herbage preference (LEBHP) perception and laboratory techniques. Local pastoralists in the study area were asked to identify common grass species and rank them according to the species' preferences and palatability to cattle. The pastoralists listed a t...

Corridors that connect otherwise isolated habitats have often been proposed as a management strategy to mitigate negative effects of habitat fragmentation. Non-crop corridors may have the potential to enhance the connectivity for arthropod predators in cropland landscapes, especially for species that require multiple habitats, such as cavity-nesting wasps which use wooded habitat for nesting an...

Delimiting communities in marine habitats is diYcult because co-occurring species often have diVerent life histories and the life stages experience the environment at diVerent spatial scales. The habitat of a particular community is embedded within a larger habitat or ecosystem with many species shared between the focal community and the larger system. Pen shells (Atrina rigida) are large bival...

in order to adapt the results of previous researches on annual forage legumes in zanjan province to cold regions condition of iran, yield and quality characters of two outstanding species namely grass pea (lathyrus sativus l.) and common vetch (vicia sativa l.) were evaluated in summer fallow cultivation condition for one year in 28 locations over 11 provinces of the country. in the variance an...

Our study presents experimentally based results on how large herbivore species affect savanna vegetation and thus murid rodents in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We permanently excluded groups of large herbivore guilds of various body sizes (ranging from white rhino to hares) from sixteen 40 × 40-m plots of vegetation by using different fence types. We determined gra...

Pollen respiratory allergies have been increasing in prevalence over the last two decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. For many allergenic trees, grass and weed species, increased pollen production and prolonged pollination period result in long-term increased abundance of pollen allergens in the atmosphere; earlier shifts of airborne pollen grains and prolonged exposu...