| Research Articles |
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| Impacts of grazing and mowing on reproductive behaviors of Stipa grandis and Stipa krylovii in a semi-arid area |
| Hui GAO, YuBao GAO*, XingDong HE |
| College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China |
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Abstract Disturbance can affect biomass allocation of plants, but can it influence plant reproductive behavior? To address this issue, we performed field plant community investigations and explored the reproductive behaviors of Stipa grandis and Stipa krylovii in response to grazing and mowing treatments at Maodeng pasture of Xilinguole League of Inner Mongolia, China during 2007–2009. The results showed that, with a similar niche width for the two plant species under mowing and grazing treatments, mowing significantly increased the ratio of ramet to genet number of S. krylovii and the carbon to nitrogen ratio of S. grandis, and grazing significantly decreased the ratio of vegetative to reproductive tiller biomass of S. grandis and increased the ratio of vegetative to reproductive tiller number of S. krylovii. Regression analysis showed that the significantly positive effect of root to shoot biomass ratio was stronger on the ratio of vegetative to reproductive tiller number of S. grandis than on that of S. krylovii. These results indicated that grazing and mowing influenced the reproductive manner and the process of sexual reproduction of S. grandis and S. krylovii.
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Received: 03 February 2013
Published: 10 February 2014
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| Fund: This research was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB421303, 2007CB106802). |
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Corresponding Authors:
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