– December 16, 2016
It will be included in January issue of The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society:
Avanesyan, A., and T.M. Culley (2017) Tolerance of native and exotic prairie grasses to herbivory by Melanoplus grasshoppers: application of a non-destructive method for estimating plant biomass changes as a response to herbivory. The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 144(1):15-25.
That was one of my last experiments on plant responses to grasshopper herbivory which I conducted in Ohio and Maryland. In this study we wanted to estimate changes in plant biomass (a proxy for plant tolerance) without clipping the plants. Interestingly, we’ve found that for the most grasses we used the predictor variable [plant height x number of leaves] was the best. Most likely it works for grasses only, but I am curious to see what combination of measurements would work for other plants. Maybe I will test it in some future experiments..
