Simulated browsing affects leaf shedding phenology and litter quality of oak and birch saplings

This study was partly funded by projects CGL2010-16880 BOS and CGL2011-26654 (MCI-Spain). A.H. and P.M. acknowledge funding from the Scottish Government's Rural and Environmental Research and Analysis Directorate. Thanks go to Raul Castillo and Richard Gwatkin for their help in running the experiment, to Elena Lahoz for chemical analyses and to Glenn Iason, John Pastor, David Whitehead and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. S.P. was funded by an MEC-SEUI postdoctoral fellowship, a JAE Doc (CSIC-FSE) contract and a Juan de la Cierva (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion) contract.