Response of Ziziphus mucronata and Acacia nilotica saplings to increasing clipping intensity in a southern African savan
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Response of Ziziphus mucronata and Acacia nilotica saplings to increasing clipping intensity in a southern African savanna Casper C. Nyamukanza . Allan Sebata
Received: 1 April 2019 / Accepted: 6 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Many woody plants respond to intense clipping through an increase in growth parameters and nutritive value. However, optimal clipping intensities that result in peak plant growth and nutritive value have not been determined. We studied the response of Ziziphus mucronata and Acacia nilotica saplings to four clipping intensities. Parts of the main stem and each lateral branch were removed to simulate 0%, 30%, 60%, and 90% clipping intensity. After four months of resprouting five sapling growth parameters were determined viz. height, basal stem diameter, length of the longest shoot, root length, and number of new shoots. In addition, foliar crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF), total phenolic (TP), and condensed tannin (CT) concentrations were determined. Shoot clipping did not stimulate sapling height and basal diameter growth, while shoot length responded to an increase in clipping intensity with a weak hump-shape in both species. Ziziphus mucronata increased root growth in
Communicated by Devan Allen McGranahan. C. C. Nyamukanza (&) Department of Animal & Wildlife Sciences, Midlands State University, P. Bag 9055, Gweru, Zimbabwe e-mail: [email protected] A. Sebata Department of Forest Resources & Wildlife Management, National University of Science & Technology, P.O. Box AC 939, Ascot, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
response to increasing clipping intensity, while A. nilotica showed no clear trend. The largest number of new shoots was produced at 60% and 30% clipping intensities for Z. mucronata and A. nilotica respectively. Ziziphus mucronata produced more new shoots than A. nilotica. The most severe (90%) clipping intensity produced the highest CP and lowest NDF content in the two species, reduced TP and CT content in A. nilotica, but not in Z. mucronata. We conclude that an increase in clipping intensity produced varying responses in sapling growth parameters and nutritive values in Z. mucronata and A. nilotica. Keywords Browsing Plant secondary metabolites Crude protein Herbivory Nutritive value
Introduction Many woody plants respond to mammalian herbivory by producing nutritive shoots, creating a positive plant–herbivore feedback loop resulting in the plants being repeatedly browsed (Fornara and du Toit 2007). The positive plant–herbivore feedback can be exploited to improve availability of nutritive browse to large herbivores (Ward 2016). Clipping woody plant shoots to simulate mammalian herbivory results in resprouting responses similar to those due to browsing by large herbivores (Bergstrom et al. 2000;
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Choeni and Sebata 2014; Tsumele et al. 2006). As a result, shoot clipping experiments are widely used to simulate large herbivore browsing (Scogings et al. 20
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