Indirect Effects of Moose on the Birds and the Bees

• Main Authors: Karen Marie Mathisen, Cover Artwork, Ronny Steen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alces alces
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.462.1178; http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/2454/1/Mathisen_KM_110310.pdf

Indirect effects of moose on the birds and the bees Large herbivores are important drivers of ecosystem processes, affecting plant species richness and composition, primary productivity, habitat structure as well as nutrient cycling. Large herbivore activities may therefore have important indirect effects on other plants and animals in the same ecosystem. The effect of herbivore activity on ecosystem processes varies with habitat productivity, herbivore selectivity, herbivore density and may be modified by different wildlife management practices. Therefore indirect effects of herbivores may also vary with these factors. In this thesis, I focus on indirect effects of moose (Alces alces) on plants and animals in the boreal forest and how these effects are modified by moose density, habitat productivity and supplementary winter feeding of moose. I studied effects of moose density and habitat productivity on species composition, growth and reproduction in the field layer vegetation and on abundance and family richness of flower-visiting insects. I also studied effects of a gradient in moose density around supplementary winter