Oecologia

, Volume 174, Issue 3, pp 1055–1064 | Cite as

Invasive clonal plant species have a greater root-foraging plasticity than non-invasive ones

  • Lidewij H. Keser
  • Wayne Dawson
  • Yao-Bin Song
  • Fei-Hai Yu
  • Markus Fischer
  • Ming Dong
  • Mark van Kleunen
Global change ecology - Original research
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Clonality is frequently positively correlated with plant invasiveness, but which aspects of clonality make some clonal species more invasive than others is not known. Due to their spreading growth form, clonal plants are likely to experience spatial heterogeneity in nutrient availability. Plasticity in allocation of biomass to clonal growth organs and roots may allow these plants to forage for high-nutrient patches. We investigated whether this foraging response is stronger in species that have become invasive than in species that have not. We used six confamilial pairs of native European clonal plant species differing in invasion success in the USA. We grew all species in large pots under homogeneous or heterogeneous nutrient conditions in a greenhouse, and compared their nutrient-foraging response and performance. Neither invasive nor non-invasive species showed significant foraging responses to heterogeneity in clonal growth organ biomass or in aboveground biomass of clonal offspring. Invasive species had, however, a greater positive foraging response in terms of root and belowground biomass than non-invasive species. Invasive species also produced more total biomass. Our results suggest that the ability for strong root foraging is among the characteristics promoting invasiveness in clonal plants.

Keywords

Clonal growth Nutrient heterogeneity Nutrient foraging Plant invasion Pre-adaptation 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank Andreas Ensslin, Anne Kempel, Arend-Jan Baakman, Babette Keser, Sebastian Keller, Bernadette van den Eeden, Christine Heiniger, Christophe Bornand, Corina Del Fabbro, Eelke Jongejans, Gemma Rutten, Hanneke van Lierop, Laura Keser, Madalin Parepa, Marc Vis, Martina Bisculm, Oana Burlacu, Peter Ellenberger, Pius Winniger, Roos Teijken, Sylvia Zingg, Thomas Chrobock, Vitek Latzel, Wim Jongejans, Yuan-Ye Zhang, Yvonne Zuercher and Zhengwen Wang for their practical help at various stages of the experiment. This project was funded by the Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation (project no. IZLCZ3 123973).

Supplementary material

442_2013_2829_MOESM1_ESM.docx (90 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 90 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lidewij H. Keser
    • 1
    • 2
  • Wayne Dawson
    • 2
  • Yao-Bin Song
    • 3
  • Fei-Hai Yu
    • 4
  • Markus Fischer
    • 1
  • Ming Dong
    • 3
  • Mark van Kleunen
    • 2
  1. 1.Institute of Plant SciencesUniversity of BernBernSwitzerland
  2. 2.Ecology, Department of BiologyUniversity of KonstanzConstanceGermany
  3. 3.State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  4. 4.School of Nature ConservationBeijing Forestry UniversityBeijingChina

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