REGULAR ARTICLE Linking grazing response of species abundance to functional traits in the Tibetan alpine meadow Kechang Niu & Shiting Zhang & Binbin Zhao & Guozhen Du Received: 20 May 2009 / Accepted: 2 October 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Whether grazing response of species abun- dance can be predicted by plant functional trait remains a challenge untested in a specific ecosystem. We measured species abundance and relevant functional traits for 30 common component species in a moderately grazed and a control community over 3 years (2005, 2006 and 2007) in a Kobresia capillifolia dominated alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. Our objective was to examine species response to grazing and to test the relationship between the response of species abundance and functional traits in grazed and control habitats. Our results showed: i) in terms of species relative abundance and saturated height (the maximum height of an adult individual), most component species significantly decrease in response to moderate grazing and the effect differed among species and between functional groups. ii) The response of species abundance was significantly negatively correlated with saturated height, but not correlated with specific leaf area or seed size. We concluded that the response direction of species abundance to grazing can be predicted by functional traits, whereas it is a weak predictor of the extent of grazing response in species abundance. Keywords Functional groups . Leaf-Height-Seed scheme . Saturated height . Seed size . Specific leaf area . Tibetan Plateau Introduction Linking plant community composition and individual component species response to grazing is a central topic in basic plant ecology as well as in rangeland management (McNaughton 1985; Moog et al. 2005; Gibson 2009). Plant species can respond to grazing with adjustments in their ecophysiological traits and changes in their relative abundance (Diaz et al. 2007). Theoretically, the plant trait-based life historical strategy should take into consideration the abundance response at population or species level across variable environments (Westoby 1998; Grime 2001;Westoby et al. 2002). With the appeal of rebuilding community ecology from functional traits (McGill et al. 2006; Plant Soil DOI 10.1007/s11104-009-0194-8 Responsible Editor: Tibor Kalapos. K. Niu (*) Department of Ecology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’ s Republic of China e-mail: kechangniu@pku.edu.cn K. Niu : S. Zhang (*) : B. Zhao : G. Du MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, People’ s Republic of China e-mail: zhangsht@lzu.edu.cn G. Du e-mail: guozdu@lzu.edu.cn B. Zhao Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730000, People’ s Republic of China e-mail: zhaobb05@lzu.cn