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Interactions among habitat, management, and demography for an invasive annual grass

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Abstract

Effective long-term management of noxious plant species depends on our ability to identify and manage ecological processes-driving invasion and to use site-specific information to design realistic management strategies and goals. However, there is a surprising lack of research that investigates relationships among habitat characteristics, weed demography, and management efforts. We investigated the interactions among these factors using the invasive annual grass medusahead (Elymus caput-medusae). In Yuba County, California, we seeded medusahead in densities from 0 to 50,000 seeds/m2 in open grassland and oak woodland habitats. We also exposed plots to defoliation none, once, or twice in a season and captured how medusahead germination, establishment, and persistence responded to experimental treatments. We found that medusahead establishment was higher in the grassland, compared to the woodland habitat, likely due, in part, to the presence of litter under oak canopies. After a single defoliation event, medusahead persistence was higher in the oak, but not the grassland plots. We also found that defoliation once or twice reduced medusahead density. However, a single clipping treatment actually resulted in increased seed production. This was likely a compensatory response by a younger cohort, and provides an explanation for why single control efforts do not generally result in successful long-term outcomes. This work highlights the complex relationships between density-dependent and density-independent processes that may influence invasion dynamics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Albert Barberán, Lauren Connell, and Brittany Forer for field assistance. ESG was supported by the Department of Plant Sciences and the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Cooperative Extension, Davis, CA, USA

    Elise S. Gornish

  2. Sierra Foothills Research and Extension Center, Browns Valley, CA, USA

    Jeremy J. James

Authors
  1. Elise S. Gornish
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  2. Jeremy J. James
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Correspondence to Elise S. Gornish.

Additional information

Communicated by Jason B. West.

Appendix

Appendix

See Figs. 5, 6 and Tables 1, 2

Fig. 5
figure 5

A soil temperature (°F) and B soil moisture during the final year of the experiment in open grassland (black lines) and oak woodland (gray lines) plots

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Fig. 6
figure 6

Example of a single replicate plot layout

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Table 1 ANOVA output for the multi-density study
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Table 2 ANOVA output for the single-density (50,000 seeds) study
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Gornish, E.S., James, J.J. Interactions among habitat, management, and demography for an invasive annual grass. Plant Ecol 217, 1247–1258 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-016-0651-4

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