Open AccessTiming outweighs magnitude of rainfall in shaping population dynamics of a small mammal species in steppe grassland
Author(s) -
Guoliang Li,
Xiaofeng Wan,
Baofa Yin,
Wanhong Wei,
Xiyong Hou,
Xin Zhang,
Erdenetuya Batsuren,
Jidong Zhao,
ShuLi Huang,
Xiaoming Xu,
Jing Liu,
Yiran Song,
Arpat Özgül,
Christopher R. Dickman,
Guiming Wang,
Charles J. Krebs,
Zhibin Zhang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2023691118
Subject(s) - grassland , phenology , herbivore , ecology , population , steppe , vole , biology , ecosystem , biomass (ecology) , growing season , generalist and specialist species , forb , trophic level , population size , habitat , demography , sociology
Significance Disentangling the effects of rainfall timing and magnitude on animal and plant populations is essential to reveal the biological consequence of diverse climate change scenarios around the world. We conducted a 10-y, large-scale, manipulative experiment to examine the bottom-up effects of changes in rainfall regime on the population dynamics of Brandt’s voles in the steppe grassland of Inner Mongolia, China. We found that a moderate rainfall increase during the early growing season could produce marked increases in vole population size by increasing the biomass of preferred plant species, whereas large increases in rainfall produced no additional increase in vole population growth. Our study highlights the importance of rainfall magnitude and timing on the nonlinear population dynamics of herbivores.