1 Hunting history was provided by Hopewell Valley Friends of Open Space and the Mercer County Parks Department, the owners and managers of these natural areas.
2 Native shrub cover and herb layer native species richness decrease with deer overabundance (Rawinski 2008). Shrub cover was measured with a ‘forest secchi’ method (from Michael Van Clef, Hopewell Valley Friends of Open Space). It quantifies the percent vertical foliage cover of native woody plants in the deer browse zone, 0.4 m – 1.4 m from the ground (Pierson & deCalesta 2015), by a researcher observing from across the plot a 1 m2 board that was divided into a 4 x 4 grid, and counting the percentage of grid squares intercepted by native woody plants. This was done in two perpindicular directions and the values were averaged. Native species richness was from a spring herb layer census, using the census method described in the paper; values shown are for the number of species in the 16 m2 plots.
3 Quercus rubra and/or Q. velutina (red and black oak) were the only preferred deer food species (Wakeland & Swihart 2009) that also are common seed-source canopy trees in each of this study’s forests. Quercus presence was from spring and fall censuses. Canopy tree importance values for Q. rubra plusQ. velutina were obtained with standard procedures (Brower et al. 1990).
4 The presence of tell-tale shredded twig tips indicated deer browse (Pierson & deCalesta 2015). The browse index for each forest consisted of the proportion of browsed individuals in unfenced plots of five native species that were browsed by deer and sufficiently common in the forests’ understories to use for comparison between forests: Carya spp., Fagus grandifolia,Fraxinus pennsylvanica, Acer rubrum , and Rubus allegheniensis .
Table 2. Mixed model results for the effects of fencing treatment,Microstegium vimineum (MIVI) cover, and interactions on foliar antioxidant capacity (A), phenolics concentration (B), and flavonoid concentration (C) in juveniles of the tree species Fraxinus pennsylvanica and Fagus grandifolia growing in forests of central New Jersey, USA.