Abstract
Although food supplementation is well known to increase population density, there is still debate on the causative effects of food supplementation on reproduction, survival, and immigration. Large manipulative experiments, which exclude any confounding effects of dispersal and predation, are essential for clarifying the debate. In this study, we investigated the effects of food supplementation on Brandt’s vole population dynamics and plant community in eight large enclosures (0.48 ha each) from 2010 to 2014. Food supplementation showed significant positive effects on population density due to increases in recruitment; however, it showed a complex effect on survival of voles: positive in non-breeding seasons, but negative in breeding seasons. In addition, food supplementation increased the quality of plants (as reflected by increased crude protein content), but decreased the quantity of less preferred plants in experimental enclosures. Thus, food seems to have direct positive effects on small rodents through improvement of food supply and indirect negative effects through food-induced density-dependent effects, and may have long-term effects on rodents through altering plant community composition and abundance.
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Acknowledgements
We thank QinghuaWei, Lijun Chen, and DaweiWang for their help with the fieldwork. This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB109102).
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Table S1 Relative preference index of Brandt’s voles for 13 plant species in the experimental enclosures. Data represent the yearly mean.
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Yin, B., Li, G., Wan, X. et al. Large manipulative experiments reveal complex effects of food supplementation on population dynamics of Brandt’s voles. Sci. China Life Sci. 60, 911–920 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9114-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9114-9