Effects on of abandonment on rare, common and widespread taxa.
For plants, springtails and mites, no taxa were classified as
‘relatively widespread’, which we defined as taxa present in
>75% of all plots. In general, removal of grazing had a
disproportionately large impact on rare taxa (according to our
definition of the category rare: these are less ubiquitous taxa which
are present in < 25% of all plots) compared to common and
widespread taxa (Figure 4).
For
most groups of soil organisms and plants, rare species decreased more
than the common species as a result of grazing removal, although for
mites and bacteria this trend was not significant. For plants and
nematodes, the diversity of rare species decreased more strongly
(response ratio < -1) than for bacteria, fungi, protists,
springtails and mites (response ratio between -0.1 and -0.6 (Figure 4).