Herbaceous Plant Ecology

1. Differential herbivory tolerance of dominant and subordinate plant species along gradients of nutrient availability and competition

   • Pejman Tahmasebi Kohyani, B. Bossuyt, D. Bonte, M. Hoffmann

   Pages 247-255

2. Responses of clonal architecture to experimental defoliation: a comparative study between ten grassland species

   • Marie-Lise Benot, Cendrine Mony, Sara Puijalon, Majid Mohammad-Esmaeili, Jacques J. M. van Alphen, Jan-Bernard Bouzillé et al.

   Pages 257-266

3. Diffuse knapweed (Centaurea diffusa Lam.) seedling emergence and establishment in a Colorado grassland

   • Paul J. Meiman, Edward F. Redente, Mark W. Paschke

   Pages 267-274

4. Biodiversity and tallgrass prairie decomposition: the relative importance of species identity, evenness, richness, and micro-topography

   • Timothy L. Dickson, Brian J. Wilsey

   Pages 275-285

5. Herbivory and local genetic differentiation in natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae)

   • Asghar Mosleh Arany, Tom J. de Jong, Ed van der Meijden

   Pages 287-295

6. The effect of nutrient supply and light intensity on tannins and mycorrhizal colonisation in Dutch heathland ecosystems

   • Jantineke D. Hofland-Zijlstra, Frank Berendse

   Pages 297-311

7. Spatial and temporal dynamics of floating and drift-line seeds at a tidal freshwater marsh on the Potomac River, USA

   • K. N. Hopfensperger, A. H. Baldwin

   Pages 313-322

8. Estimating plant competition coefficients and predicting community dynamics from non-destructive pin-point data: a case study with Calluna vulgaris and Deschampsia flexuosa

   • Christian Damgaard, Torben Riis-Nielsen, Inger Kappel Schmidt

   Pages 323-333

9. Disturbance by mowing affects clonal diversity: the genetic structure of Ranunculus ficaria (Ranunculuaceae) in meadows and forests

   • Christoph Reisch, Sebastian Scheitler

   Pages 335-343

10. Soil amendment effects on the exotic annual grass Bromus tectorum L. and facilitation of its growth by the native perennial grass Hilaria jamesii (Torr.) Benth

    • Jayne Belnap, Susan K. Sherrod

    Pages 345-357

11. Effects of fire on the vegetation of a lowland heathland in North-western Italy

    • Luca Borghesio

    Pages 359-367

recruitment of adult plants in entire communities, and all of them focus on changes in total densities of A central issue of plant ecology is the understanding individuals and do not refer to changes in community of the relative role of different life history stages in structure (Moles and Drake 1999; Rebollo et al. successful plant recruitment. The consecutive stages 2001; Goldberg et al. 2001). This ?eld of research of seed, seedling, and adult are related to each other has hardly been explored empirically, and we think it in a complex way that largely depends on species and may reveal interesting mechanisms for the regulation the in?uence of physical and biological factors of individual density and species diversity in plant (Goldberg et al. 2001), for example, irrigation and communities. At the functional group level (which grazing. As a result of relationships between these sorts species according to common features), we stages, the consequences of an ecological factor expect differences depending on growth form depend on the way that its effects propagate onto the (grasses versus forbs) and depending on seed mass following stage of the recruitment process. As far as (differences between small-seeded, medium-seeded, we know, there are no published studies that have and large-seeded species). Some authors (Goldberg addressed this subject. et al. 2001; Rebollo et al. 2001) studying annual In this article, we characterize the relationships plant communities have found greater seedling between the three plant developmental stages.

• Competition
• Disturbance
• Grazing
• Reproductive ecology
• Species diversity
• Vegetation
• ecology

• Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, USA

  A. G. Valk

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