Grazing-induced shifts in community functional composition and soil nutrient availability in Tibetan alpine meadows

The functional structure of plant communities can be altered by grazing through two main mechanisms: species turnover (i.e. changes in species occurrence and relative abundance) and intraspecific trait variability (ITV), which is driven by phenotypic responses of individual plants and shifts in the relative abundance of genotypic variants within species. Studies of grassland ecosystem function under grazing often focus on community changes induced by species turnover, which ignores the effects of ITV on biomass productivity, soil carbon or nutrient availability. By quantifying the relative contribution of both effects on shifts in community-wide traits, we highlight the role of ITV in community functional response to grazing and its implications for ecosystem function in Tibetan alpine meadows.

We measured three chemical traits (LC: leaf carbon, LN: leaf nitrogen and LP: leaf phosphorus concentrations) and two morphological traits (SLA: specific leaf area, LDMC: leaf dry matter conte...