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Halting the loss of grassland biodiversity and restoring degraded ecosystems are high priority tasks in the EU Biodiversity Strategy. Sowing low-diversity seed mixtures is widely used in grassland restoration because of its high predictability and fast, promising results. Generally, the sown perennial grasses establish within a few years and form a dense sward, which effectively suppresses weeds. Unfortunately, these grasslands are often species-poor because the sown grasses hamper the colonisation of target grassland forbs. Our aim was to test a novel approach to increase the diversity of species-poor grasslands. We selected eight 8-year-old grasslands restored by low-diversity seed sowing where we created 32 establishment gaps by breaking up the grass sward and sowing a high-diversity seed mixture (35 native species). Altogether, we established three grazed gaps (1m × 1m, 2m × 2m and 4m × 4m) and one fenced gap (4m × 4m) per site and monitored the presence and abundance of sown and non-sown species within a time frame of two years. We asked the following questions: (1) Which target species establish most successfully? (2) What is the effect of establishment gap size on the establishment success of target species and weeds? (3) What is the effect of management (grazed versus not managed) on the species composition of the establishment gaps? Our results showed that by creating establishment gaps and sowing diverse seed mixtures, we were able to overcome microsite and propagule limitation, successfully introducing target species into the species-poor grasslands. We found that all sown species established in the gaps, and the majority of the species maintained or even increased their first-year cover in the second year. Smaller gaps were characterised by lower cover of sown species and a quite stochastic development compared to the larger ones. Weed cover was moderate in the first year and decreased significantly in the second year, regardless of gap size. Therefore, in restoration practice, the use of larger establishment gaps is recommended. We found that the cover of sown species and weeds were similar in the grazed and unmanaged gaps during our study. However, management by extensive grazing might be crucial in the long-term because livestock can disperse target species propagules and create microsites. Our study shows that establishment gaps can serve as biodiversity hotspots. Further studies need to clarify to what extent they can improve the restoration success across the entire grassland.
Understanding plant-plant interactions is essential in planning and implementing effective grassland management strategies. Positive and negative interactions generally co-occur in plant communities and the net effect of these interactions may depend on the disturbance regime, including grazing. Shrubs can act as biotic refuges by physically protecting neighbouring plants from herbivores. As a result, we would expect that in pastures the diversity and flowering success of plants is higher in the close vicinity of shrubs compared to the open vegetation. Nevertheless, we can also assume a competitive trade-off cost for plants that grow together with shrubs. In this study, we assessed the small-scale effects of dwarf shrubs (30–40 cm in diameter) on species density and flowering success. Specifically, we considered three types of microsites: (i) shrub interior, (ii) edge of shrub, and (iii) open pasture (more than 2 meters away from the shrub). We surveyed these three types of microsites using 10 × 10 cm sized plots both in grazed and ungrazed meadow steppe, in central Hungary. The highest species density was found at the edge of shrubs, both in grazed and ungrazed vegetation. Meanwhile, species density did not differ significantly between shrub interiors and the open pasture. However, in grazed vegetation, species flowering success was significantly higher in shrub interiors and edges than in the open pasture; no significant trend was observed for this measure in ungrazed vegetation. In contrast to previous studies, we did not detect a competitive effect of small-sized shrubs on plants in ungrazed vegetation. Our results indicate that small-sized shrubs protect other plants from herbivores and that the edge effect plays an important role for the maintenance of small-scale species diversity in pastures. Overall, our results underline the beneficial effect of biotic refuges in pastures and we suggest that retaining a sparse population of small-sized native shrubs is advantageous from a conservation point of view.