Varying impacts of cervid, hare and vole browsing on growth and survival of boreal tree seedlings.

Mari Lyly, Tero Klemola, Elina Koivisto, Otso Huitu, Lauri Oksanen, Erkki Korpimäki
Oecologia: January 2014, Volume 174, Issue 1, pp 271-281

The negative impacts of mammalian herbivores on plants have been studied quite extensively, but typically with only a single herbivore species at a time. They conducted a novel comparison of the browsing effects of voles, hares and cervids upon the growth and survival of boreal tree seedlings. This was done by excluding varying assemblages of these key mammalian herbivores from silver birch, Scots pine and Norway spruce seedlings for 3 years.