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When deciding whether or not to eat a plant, herbivores are influenced by the nutritional value of potential foods, but also indirectly by neighbouring plants (associational effects). We aimed to investigate how the abundance and nutritional quality of neighbours of balsam firs (Abies balsamea) affects browsing on balsam firs by white‐tailed deer. We sought to distinguish the effects of conspecific and heterospecific neighbour abundance, and to evaluate whether intraspecific variation in nutritional traits produces associational effects.

Anticosti Island, QC, Canada.

We measured the abundance of stems in 4‐m² plots centred on a focal balsam fir and evaluated nutritional value (nitrogen content and digestibility) of focal firs and neighbouring plants. We used generalized linear models to explain browsing on firs as a function of the neighbouring stem abundance (conspecific and heterospecific …