Horses and vegetation

Many studies show that large herbivores can have an important impact on the composition of vegetation. With the establishment of a year round, low density grazing regime, plant ecologists and nature managers expect that through selective grazing, herbivores will create a mosaic of different vegetation communities varying in structure and plant species composition. It is believed that such a mosaic in the end will guarantee a high degree of biodiversity. Grazing will, therefore, seem to be a suitable means to maintain grass. Also important is the ability of herbivores affect vegetation through endozoochory. In this thesis I have tried to find out what species of diet horses prefer regarding to plant species and what plant species they can spread through out endozoochory. I have compared this knowledge with the composition of pasture and meadow vegetation at the researched locality in Malenice and Hoslovice. With the purpose of finding out the preferences I established spots where I registered data on vegetation before pasture and the time intervals during the pasture. Afterwards, I researched the amount of sprouts and the composition of seedlings in excrements that I let germinate. I had to create phytocenologic shots from the pastures and meadows to compare the species of composition of grazed and..