Geese are directing the plant and microbial communities of their arctic forage habitat

• Main Authors: Loonen, Maarten, Fivez, Lise, Teuchies, Johannes, Boon, Nico, Meire, Patrick
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: University of Antwerp 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Svalbard; Barnacle goose; Branta leucopsis
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/650b7b6c-1835-4992-9b4c-90d06fd7f581; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/650b7b6c-1835-4992-9b4c-90d06fd7f581; https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/16295103/LiseFivezPhDpaper1.pdf

The presented study aims to add more field evidence of goose grazing impact on the structure of Arctic ecosystems, which is necessary to better understand the effect of rising goose numbers on complex ecosystem processes. The conducted research made use of long-term exclosures on Svalbard to study the influence of Barnacle Goose Branta leucopsis grazing on vascular plants, the moss layer and abiotic soil conditions. Molecular fingerprinting using PCRDGGE was used to get also a first idea of the possible goose grazing effect on microbial communities. Barnacle Goose grazing was found to significantly influence on the vegetation composition and to reduce species number, vegetation biomass and depth of the moss layer. Our results suggest also the effect to trickle down to the decomposer food web influencing the microbial community structure. Those differences are probably leading to changes in important ecosystem processes such as soil nutrient dynamics. The presented study adds thus to the growing body of evidence that geese are ecosystem engineers sculpturing Arctic ecosystem. Our results suggest, however, that the observed changes are reversible.