I am interested to know if you will be looking at southern Sierra Nevada populations of porcupine and the effect on tree spacing after their extirpation. I am curious to know if there is any research on the forest tree die-off was made worse by this missing ecological link that used to thin trees naturally?
If the self-thinning theory of plants is correct, it will have no effect on tree spacing.
See:
The Self-Thinning Rule: Dead or Alive?
W. M. Lonsdale
Ecology
Vol. 71, No. 4 (Aug., 1990), pp. 1373-1388
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Ecological Society of America
DOI: 10.2307/1938275
and
A Reevaluation of the -3/2 Power Rule of Plant Self-Thinning
Donald E. Weller
Ecological Monographs
Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 23-43
Hi Alison, good question. We are not studying the southern Sierra Nevada populations. I'm not sure if there's enough historical data on porcupines in that area to compare their role in tree thinning before and after population decline, but I am not that familiar with the system. Would be curious to hear from other folks!
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