The Potential for Horses to Disperse Alien Plants Along Recreational Trails

摘要: Plant invasions are rapidly becoming an important threat to the conservation of wildlands. Understanding how potentially invasive plants dispersed new habitats is a critical step in process understanding such invasions. Our objective was characterize potential for long-distance transport plant species digestive tract horses along recreational trails. We sampled horse dung first 4 000 m Lower Piney River trail White Forest western Colorado. evaluated seed content each sample by applying standard methods soil bank analysis. found 20 and 564 seedlings. Twelve were graminoids, 6 forbs, 1 shrub, tree. The evenly divided between natives aliens, but 85% seedlings aliens. An average 47 emerged per sample, range from 192. results make it clear that horses, very likely all pack stock used on trails, represent dispersal vector alien into