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Fast seedling root growth leads to competitive superiority of invasive plants

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Abstract

The competitive superiority of invasive plants plays a key role in the process of plant invasions, enabling invasive plants to overcome the resistance of local plant communities. Fast aboveground growth and high densities lead to the competitive superiority of invasive species in the competition for light. However, little is understood of the role belowground root competition may play in invasion. We conducted an experiment to test the effect of root growth on the performance of an invasive shrub Cassia alata, a naturalized, non-invasive shrub Corchorus capsularis, and a native shrub Desmodium reticulatum. We compared seedling growth of the three species and their competitive ability in situ. The roots of the C. alata seedlings grew much faster than those of C. capsularis and D. reticulatum during the entire growth period although C. alata had shorter shoots than D. reticulatum. Furthermore, C. alata showed an apparent competition advantage compared to the other two species as evidenced by less biomass reduction in intraspecific competition and higher competitive effects in interspecific competition. Our study reveals that fast seedling root growth may be important in explaining the competitive advantages of invasive plants. Future studies should pay more attention to the belowground traits of invasive plants, the trade-off between shoot and root growth, and the role of root competition in affecting the population dynamics of invasive plants and the structures of invaded communities.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Fangliang He from University of Alberta for comments on the manuscript. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant (No. 31370441) and Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (201610010082).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SYSU-Alberta Joint Lab for Biodiversity Conservation and State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Ming Ni, Yu Liu, Chengjin Chu & Suqin Fang

  2. Research Institute of Tropical Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Guangzhou, 510520, China

    Han Xu

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  1. Ming Ni
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  2. Yu Liu
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  3. Chengjin Chu
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  4. Han Xu
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  5. Suqin Fang
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MN and SF conceived the project and designed the experiments. NM conducted the experiments and analyses. MN, YL, CC, HX and SF wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

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Correspondence to Suqin Fang.

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Ni, M., Liu, Y., Chu, C. et al. Fast seedling root growth leads to competitive superiority of invasive plants. Biol Invasions 20, 1821–1832 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-018-1664-9

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