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Invasive and native plants show different root responses to feedback-mediated soil heterogeneity

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Abstract

Background and aims

Soil heterogeneity can be caused by plant-soil feedback (PSF), but little is known about how this affects plant growth and the distribution of roots. Moreover, as invasive and native plant species frequently differ in PSF and root-foraging ability, they may differ in their responses to PSF-mediated soil heterogeneity.

Methods

We first conditioned soils by 16 plant species (eight confamilial pairs of invasive alien and native species). Then, we grew each species in a homogeneous treatment with unconditioned soil and in three heterogeneous treatments with four patches. In the home-soil treatment, we filled two patches with unconditioned soil and two with soil conditioned by the target species. In the foreign-soil treatment, we filled two patches with unconditioned soil and two with soil conditioned by the other species in a pair. In the home-and-foreign-soil treatment, we filled two patches with home soil and two with foreign soil.

Results

Compared to the homogeneous unconditioned soil treatment, PSF negatively affected plant growth. In the heterogeneous treatment with control- and home-soil patches, biomass was reduced more strongly for the invasive species than for the native species. In the heterogeneous treatment with both home- and foreign-soil patches, root biomass of the invasive species was greater in the foreign-soil than in the home-soil patches, whereas the reverse was true for natives.

Conclusion

Although invasive species suffered more from conspecific PSF, root foraging allowed them to avoid home soil. In the long term, this could help invasive species gain a competitive advantage over natives.

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Data availability

The raw data are available upon request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Aiming Cai, Changgen Lin, Rong Yan, Lie Xu, Xin He, Hongfei Shu and Xiaoxu Yin for the practical assistance. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171510, 31770449, 32071527), by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2662020YLPY016) and by the Ten Thousand Talents Program of Zhejiang Province (2018R52016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Horticulture & Forestry Sciences / Hubei Engineering Technology Research Center for Forestry Information, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Duo Chen & Yong-Jian Wang

  2. Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464, Konstanz, Germany

    Duo Chen & Mark van Kleunen

  3. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation, Taizhou University, Taizhou, 318000, China

    Mark van Kleunen & Fei-Hai Yu

  4. Institute of Wetland Ecology & Clone Ecology, Taizhou University, Taizhou, 318000, China

    Fei-Hai Yu

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Contributions

D.C. and Y.J.W. designed the experiment. D.C. performed the experiment. D.C. and Y.J.W. carry out the statistical analysis. D.C. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. F.H.Y and M.v.K. contributed substantially to the revisions.

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Correspondence to Yong-Jian Wang or Fei-Hai Yu.

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Chen, D., van Kleunen, M., Wang, YJ. et al. Invasive and native plants show different root responses to feedback-mediated soil heterogeneity. Plant Soil 494, 497–508 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06296-w

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