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Inhibition of an invasive plant (Mikania micrantha H.B.K.) by soils of three different forests in lower subtropical China

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Abstract

Biological invasion represents one of the most serious threats to biodiversity, and invasion ecology research has become one of the central issues of contemporary environmental science. However, the relative role of soil development as correlated with succession in influencing variation in invasion resistance has seldom been examined. We hypothesized that the invasion potential of exotic plants depends on soil conditions. In this study, we explored variation among soils of three forest types in their resistance to invasion by Mikania micrantha H.B.K. in lower subtropical China; this species is one of the top ten most invasive weeds in the world. In model systems of soils from different forests, M. micrantha performed worst on undisturbed late-successional stage forest (monsoon evergreen broadleaf forest, MEBF) soils and did not appear to take advantage of abundant soil nutrients. These results could reflect that a potential inhibitory effect was driven by MEBF soil. Plant litter is an important component of soils, litter bioassay and addition experiments demonstrated native plant species from different forests differentially confer invasion resistance and affect the performance of exotic plants. Naturally, other factors such as the relative abundances of nutrients, microbial feedbacks, could have contributed to these results as well. Our results challenge the notion that forests are not immune to invasion and suggest that maintaining late-successional plant communities in lower subtropical China, which could be related to increased productivity and stability, should be a primary objective of land managers.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Dinghushan Forest Ecosystem Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for providing access to the field sites. We thank Prof. ZL Huang, Prof. JM Mo, postdoctoral researcher QQ Huang, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on the early versions of this manuscript. The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30670385) and the Key Program of the Ministry of Education of China (704037), and the Natural Science Fund of Guangdong (9251027501000006; 9451027501002460).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, 510275, Guangzhou, China

    Yu-Ping Hou, Shao-Lin Peng, Bao-Ming Chen & Guang-Yan Ni

  2. College of Life Sciences, Ludong University, 264025, Yantai, China

    Yu-Ping Hou

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  1. Yu-Ping Hou
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Correspondence to Shao-Lin Peng.

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Hou, YP., Peng, SL., Chen, BM. et al. Inhibition of an invasive plant (Mikania micrantha H.B.K.) by soils of three different forests in lower subtropical China. Biol Invasions 13, 381–391 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-010-9830-8

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