Grazing and the Phenology of Flowering and Fruiting in a Montane Grassland in Argentina: A Niche Approach

We compared flowering and fruiting patterns of plants showing different pollination modes, to assess whether consistent differences emerged between grazed and ungrazed herbaceous communities. We also analysed the relationships among their phenologies, pollination modes and growth forms. We analysed a site protected from large herbivores for 12 years and a grazed site. In both of them we recorded flowering and fruiting events for the 20 most frequent species in different climatic periods during one year. We calculated their niche breadth, niche overlap and the dispersion of maximum peaks of flowering and fruiting. Grazing was not associated with significant changes in species composition or with invasion by exotics (...)