Table 1.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) coefficients, standard errors (s.e.) and probabilities (p) for understory vegetation response to protection from or exposure to deer herbivory at Black Rock Forest. One-way arrows represent paths between variables, while two-way arrows represent covariance. Standardized coefficients for covariances are correlation coefficients. Critical ratios (C.R.) are the estimated coefficient divided by its standard error. p-Values lower than 0.001 are presented as ‘<0.001’. We used the standard critical α of p < 0.05 to determine which paths were significant, as shown in figure 3a,b.

	estimate (s.e.)	standardized	C.R.	p-value
vegetation protected from herbivory
Shannon ← TD	0.59 (0.11)	1.28	5.34	<0.001
Simpson ← TD	0.14 (0.50)	0.75	2.68	0.007
FD_Divergence ← FD	0.03 (0.03)	0.27	1.11	0.267
FD_Evenness ← FD	0.05 (0.05)	0.27	1.10	0.270
Faith ← PD	0.14 (0.03)	0.96	4.33	<0.001
MPD ← PD	0.16 (0.04)	0.87	3.64	<0.001
Total_Cover ← TD	11.97 (19.16)	0.68	0.63	0.532
Total_Cover ← FD	−11.31 (16.77)	−0.64	−0.68	0.500
Total_Cover ← PD	7.04 (10.20)	0.40	0.69	0.490
TD ↔ FD	0.93 (0.52)	0.93	1.78	0.075
PD ↔ FD	0.35 (0.78)	0.35	0.45	0.652
PD ↔ TD	0.27 (0.18)	0.27	1.48	0.140
nTaxa ↔ TD	0.76 (0.57)	0.29	1.35	0.177
nTaxa ↔ FD	0.65 (2.10)	0.24	0.31	0.756
nTaxa ↔ PD	2.60 (0.57)	1.01	4.73	<0.001
vegetation exposed to herbivory
Shannon ← TD	0.43 (0.07)	1.20	5.94	<0.001
Simpson ← TD	0.12 (0.04)	0.79	2.98	0.003
FD_Divergence ← FD	0.10 (0.04)	0.73	2.82	0.005
FD_Evenness ← FD	−0.02 (0.04)	−0.11	−0.47	0.638
Faith ← PD	0.18 (0.04)	1.06	5.20	<0.001
MPD ← PD	0.10 (0.05)	0.57	2.04	0.041
Total_Cover ← TD	6.19 (4.61)	0.35	1.34	0.179
Total_Cover ← FD	16.51 (5.41)	0.92	3.05	0.002
Total_Cover ← PD	−2.30 (5.29)	−0.12	−0.44	0.660
TD ↔ FD	−0.03 (0.26)	−0.03	−0.110	0.913
PD ↔ FD	0.71 (0.21)	0.71	3.30	<0.001
PD ↔ TD	0.43 (0.19)	0.43	2.19	0.028
nTaxa ↔ TD	1.64 (0.96)	0.42	1.71	0.087
nTaxa ↔ FD	3.25 (1.10)	0.83	2.95	0.003
nTaxa ↔ PD	3.59 (0.91	0.92	3.97	<0.001