The Effect of Snow on Plants and Their Interactions with Herbivores.

• Main Author: Torp, Mikaela
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap 2010
• Subjects: Snow; arctic ecosystem; plant-herbivore interactions; phenology; nitrogen; phenolics; experimental manipulation; natural gradient; inter-annual variability; Biological Sciences; Biologiska vetenskaper; Abisko; Arctic; Dwarf birch; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-30444

The ongoing climate changes are predicted to accelerate fast in arctic regions with increases in both temperatures and precipitation. Although the duration of snow cover is generally expected to decrease in the future, snow depth may paradoxically increase in those areas where a large amount of the elevated precipitation will fall as snow. The annual distribution and duration of snow are important features in arctic ecosystems, influencing plant traits and species interactions in various ways. In this thesis, I investigated the effect of snow on plants and their interactions with herbivores by experimentally increasing the snow cover by snow fences in three different habitats along an environmental gradient in Abisko, northern Sweden. I found that the snow cover mattered for plant quality as food for herbivores and herbivore performance. An enhanced and prolonged snow cover increased the level of insect herbivory on dwarf birch leaves under field conditions. Autumnal moth larvae feeding on leaves that had experienced increased snow-lie grew faster and pupated earlier than larvae fed with leaves from control plots. These findings indicated that plants from snow-rich plots produced higher-quality food for herbivores. My studies showed that differences in snow-lie explained parts of the within-year spatial and seasonal variation in plant chemistry and patterns of herbivory in this arctic landscape. The relationship between leaf nitrogen concentration and plant phenology was consistent between treatments and habitats, indicating that snow per se, via a delayed phenology, was controlling the nitrogen concentration. The relationship between leaf age and level of herbivory was positive in the beginning of the growing season, but negative in the end of the growing season, indicating an increasing importance of plant palatability and a decreasing importance of exposure time in determining the level of herbivory throughout the growing season. The concentrations of phenolics varied among habitats, treatments and sampling ...