Question

You are a u.s. forest service ranger walking through a mature forest community and identifying seedlings (newly sprouted stems). on your walk, you identify three climax tree species germinating in the understory. you decide to perform a 6-month experiment to determine whether you could better manage the forest to increase tree species richness in the understory. in treatment 1, you open a hole in the canopy to let light reach the forest floor. in treatment 2, you build a fence around your plot to keep herbivores out. in treatment 3, you add nutrients to the understory. treatment 4 you keep as a control. after 6 months, you discover that tree species richness in the understory is 10, 1, 9, and 5 in treatments 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. which of these new strategies would you not employ to increase species richness?

a. periodically cut down a canopy tree
b. discourage any changes in the management of the forest
c. encourage normal herbivory levels
d. periodically fertilize the forest understory
e. encourage hunting of herbivores

Answer 1

To increase tree species richness in the forest understory, one would not employ building fences to keep out herbivores, as this was shown to reduce species richness greatly.

Step-by-step explanation:

To increase tree species richness in the forest understory, based on the experiment with different treatments, one strategy that we would not employ is to build a fence around the plot to keep herbivores out. The experiment's outcomes showed that opening a canopy hole (treatment 1) resulted in the highest richness with 10 species, adding nutrients (treatment 3) resulted in 9 species, while the control (treatment 4) had a richness of 5 species. However, keeping herbivores out (treatment 2) only sustained a richness of 1 species, indicating that this strategy greatly reduced tree species richness and therefore should not be employed if the goal is to increase it.