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Non-native liana, Euonymus fortunei, associated with increased soil nutrients, unique bacterial communities, and faster decomposition rate

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Abstract

Invasive plants have wide-ranging impacts on native systems including reducing native plant richness and altering soil chemistry, microbes, and nutrient cycling. Increasingly, these effects are found to linger long after removal of the invader. We examined how soil chemistry, bacterial communities, and litter decomposition varied with cover of Euonymus fortunei, an invasive evergreen liana, in two central Kentucky deciduous forests. In one forest, E. fortunei invaded in the late 1990s but invasion remained patchy and we paired invaded and uninvaded plots to examine the associations between E. fortunei cover and our response variables. In the second forest, E. fortunei had completely invaded the forest by 2005; areas where it had been selectively removed by 2010 were paired with an adjacent invaded plot. Where E. fortunei had patchily invaded, E. fortunei patches had up to 3.5× nitrogen, 2.7× carbon, and 1.9× more labile glomalin in soils than uninvaded plots, whereas there were no differences in soil characteristics between invaded and removal plots. In the patchily invaded forest, bacterial community composition varied among invaded and non-invaded plots, whereas bacterial communities did not vary among invaded and removal plots. Finally, E. fortunei leaf litter decomposed faster (k = 4.91 year−1) than the native liana (k = 3.77 year−1), Vitis vulpina; decomposition of both E. fortunei and V. vulpina was faster in invaded (k = 7.10 year−1) than removal plots (k = 4.77 year−1). Our findings suggest that E. fortunei invasion increases the rate of leaf litter decomposition via high-quality litter, alters the decomposition environment, and shifts in the soil biotic communities associated with a dense mat of wintercreeper. Land managers with limited resources should target the densest mats for the greatest restoration potential and remove wintercreeper patches before they establish dense mats.

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Acknowledgements

Milinda Hamilton provided assistance in sample processing; Todd Rounsaville provided access to field sites; Nicolas Body and Kali Mattingly provided field assistance; J.T. Lennon hosted the sabbatical of SRB; and Mario Muscarella provided mothur and R assistance. SRB was supported by the Kenan Sabbatical Support Fund from Transylvania University. This is publication number 16-09-076 of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station and is published with the approval of the Director. This work is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, McIntire-Stennis project under accession number 0220128.

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  1. Andrew M. Hoyt

    Present address: Carleton College, Northfield, MN, 55057, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Transylvania University, Lexington, KY, 40508, USA

    Sarah R. Bray

  2. Henry Clay High School, Lexington, KY, 40502, USA

    Andrew M. Hoyt

  3. Department of Forestry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40546, USA

    Zhijie Yang & Mary A. Arthur

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  1. Sarah R. Bray
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Correspondence to Sarah R. Bray.

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Bray, S.R., Hoyt, A.M., Yang, Z. et al. Non-native liana, Euonymus fortunei, associated with increased soil nutrients, unique bacterial communities, and faster decomposition rate. Plant Ecol 218, 329–343 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-016-0689-3

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