How does stocking rate influence horse behaviour, performances and pasture biodiversity in mesophile grasslands?

Reducing grazing intensity is widely recommended as a strategy to increase grassland biodiversity through greater sward heterogeneity. Horses are playing an increasing role in the management of permanent grasslands across Europe, but the effects of horse grazing under contrasting stocking rates have been poorly studied. Here we describe the effects of two contrasted stocking rates (“High” 1.8 LU ha−1vs. “Moderate” 1.1 LU ha−1) on sward structure, horse foraging behaviour and performances, and pasture biodiversity in a mesophile grassland of central France. Horses selectively grazed vegetative patches of high nutritive value, especially at the moderate stocking rate (p 270 g animal−1 d−1) at the same level in highly and moderately grazed plots despite contrasted herbage biomass and quality. Horses, with their two sets of incisors, created and maintained patches of short grass in a matrix of tall vegetation in both treatments. Consequently, sward structural heterogeneity did not significantly differ between highly and moderately grazed plots, and there was no detectable effect of grazing intensity on floristic and arthropod diversity over the four-year study. The two stocking rates did however result in a divergent evolution of legumes for which abundance increased at the high stocking rate (p < 0.05). Abundance of Carabidae and grasshoppers from tall grasslands was higher at the moderate stocking rate (p < 0.05). We conclude that decreasing stocking rate would only have a marginal effect on grassland biodiversity, while farm performance will be strongly affected by the decrease in the number of horses per unit area

A biodiversity-friendly rotational grazing system enhancing flower-visiting insect assemblages while maintaining animal and grassland productivity

Grazing management is an important tool to preserve insect biodiversity. Although literature has discussed the importance of grazing pressure adjustment to support grassland insect communities for the ecosystem services they provide, little has been published on the economic sustainability of such management adjustments to date. This study compared continuous grazing (CG) to an innovative rotational grazing system (the biodiversity-friendly rotation – BR), where a subplot was excluded from grazing for two months during the main flowering period. The effects of grazing two different species (cattle and sheep) within both systems were also evaluated. The aims were to assess the effects on butterfly, bumblebee, and ground beetle assemblages, along with the impact on herbage mass and animal performance. The BR enhanced both the abundance and species richness of flower-visiting insect assemblages and it was observed that cattle provided better results than sheep grazing. A multivariate redundancy analysis highlighted that most of the flower-visiting species (including almost all the endangered and locally rare species) were favoured by BR-cattle treatment, mainly due to the high percentage of flower cover and sward heterogeneity involved in this treatment. However, grazing system and grazer species did not affect ground beetle species richness or abundance. Moreover, herbage mass and animal performance (live weight and body condition score) were comparable between CG and BR throughout the grazing season. The BR could be a useful management system to enhance grassland flower-visiting insect assemblages whilst meeting farm production objectives, especially in protected environments where insect conservation is a major target

real_data.tar.gz

Analysis of the Cyperaceae and Amaranthaceae empirical data sets

outdir_without_chains.tar

Output files without diffsel chains

orthomam_handpicked.tar.gz

Results of the pipeline on the Orthomam tree with branches hand-picked arbitrarily

C4AmaranthaceaePolyroot.tar.gz

Results of the pipeline on the Amaranthaceae tree

cyp_coding.Chrysithr_root.tar.gz

Results of the pipeline on the cyp tree

diffsel_concat_experiment

Results of running diffsel on the concatenation experiment