mydata.xlsx

Nutrients and herbivore exclusion are two key forces influencing community structure and species richness in grassland ecosystems. However, the extent to which these factors influence the relative contributions between deterministic and stochastic processes in community assembly remains poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed data from a five-year field experiment that manipulated nutrients and herbivore exclusion in an alpine grassland on the eastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. The results showed that herbivore grazing can strengthen stochastic processes in plant community assembly. Regardless of the herbivores, fertilization reduced the importance of stochasticity and strengthened the deterministic environmental filter process that homogenized communities through the selection of graminoid species with greater competitive ability for light availability. With the increasing dominance of graminoid species, the deterministic process strongly influences species diversity loss in response to nutrients and herbivores. The findings can scientifically inform the maintenance and management of species diversity in alpine meadows.