Sunday, March 9, 2014
Deer Proliferation Disrupts a Forest's Natural Growth
Carter Terranova
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140308095500.htm
Author: Not given
Date Published: Mar. 8, 2014
Summary:
Recent studies show that deer are preventing natural establishment of forests by preferring to eat native, woody species over non-native (invasive) species. To get these results, Cornell University conducted an experiment where they examined soil cores from inside and outside a fenced deer exclosure. After retrieving the cores, they observed that the cores from inside the exclosure had many more seeds from invasive species, and outside the exclosure had more seeds from native species. Cornell's conclusion was that deer choose their forests for the kinds of trees in them, while at the same time disrupt the forests' natural growth. Not only are the deer affecting the plant life above ground by promoting the growth of thorny invasive species, but are also affecting below the surface by creating a divergence of seeds in the soil from what really should be there. There are less seeds of woody plants and more of non-native seeds that threatal the elimination of woody plant seeds.
Connection:
This article connects to the ecosystems unit and the plants unit. Throughout the ecosystems unit we learned about competition between species of plants and animals. Each organism will try to reproduce more of its species and create more plants in this case where there will be more of that particular species than the other species of plants it is competing against. The non-native species are competing against the native species, and along with the help of the deer, the non-native species is reproducing more than the native species because the deer are eating more of the native, woody species than the non-native ones. In the plants unit, we learned how plants reproduce and create food by photosynthesis with their leaves. The deer are eating these parts of the plants that create the food for them to get the energy to create their reproductive parts, which is not allowing them to balance out the deer eating their leaves and food being made so they can reproduce. Therefore, the deer are eating the native plants' leaves and are not allowing those plants to reproduce, allowing the non-native plants to spread their seeds and begin to outcompete the native plants.
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Is there something humans can do or are doing? If so, what?
ReplyDeleteAdding to Grants question do they know why the deer prefer the native plants?
ReplyDeleteOne thing that humans can do to stop the deer from disrupting forest growth is to set up areas that deer are able to go in and areas that they cannot. In Cornell's experiment, they set up deer enclosures and found that outside the enclosures were more native specie seeds than inside which had more invasive specie seeds. If something similar to this were done it would help balance out the amount of invasive specie and native specie seeds in forests. Deer prefer the native species over the invasive species because those are the plants that they are adapted to living off of and that is also how they select their forests, for their trees. Since the deer select the forests for their trees, which are the native ones, they are disrupting the forests growth by not eating the other plant types, specifically the non-native plants.
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