Abstract
Purpose
In a complex soil environment, competitive and environmental factors interact with individual traits to influence a plant’s root growth patterns and ability to compete for resources. Here, we examine how root growth of a focal plant, Plantago lanceolata L., responds to resource heterogeneity and to presence of two neighbor species, Centaurea jacea L.and Poa pratensis L.
Methods
A full factorial experiment tested the effects of nutrient heterogeneity, neighbors, and their interaction on root responses of Plantago. Roots in shared quadrants of a pot were harvested and quantified by qPCR for plants grown alone or with a neighbor, in patchy or even soil. The effects of experimental treatments on Plantago root mass distribution were tested with two-way ANOVA.
Results
When soil resources were evenly distributed, Plantago individuals increased root allocation to soil shared with a Centaurea neighbor but not a Poa neighbor. When soil resources were patchy, Plantago responded more strongly to Poa than to Centaurea, and placed more roots in the high-resource patch.
Conclusions
These results demonstrate that plants can respond differently to neighbors depending on species and that integrating multiple cues results in non-additive effects on root behavior.
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Data availability
Data are available at Dryad: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.47d7wm3cr
Code availability
Not applicable.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the undergraduate research students who contributed to development of molecular markers and to greenhouse work and data collection: Cynthia Chude, Corey Exime, Kristofer Gomes, Haim Moore, and Michelle Vanasse.
Funding
This research was funded by National Science Foundation grant DEB-1256942.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Experimental methods and data collection were performed by Kelsey Garlick. Data analysis was performed by Kelsey Garlick and Tara Rajaniemi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kelsey Garlick and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Garlick, K., Drew, R.E. & Rajaniemi, T.K. Root responses to neighbors depend on neighbor identity and resource distribution. Plant Soil 467, 227–237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-021-05083-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-021-05083-9