Competition and soil resource environment alter plant-soil feedbacks for native and exotic grasses.

ABSTRACT: Feedbacks between plants and soil biota are increasingly identified as key determinants of species abundance patterns within plant communities. However, our understanding of how plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) may contribute to invasions is limited by our understanding of how feedbacks may shift in the light of other ecological processes. Here we assess how the strength of PSFs may shift as soil microbial communities change along a gradient of soil nitrogen (N) availability and how these dynamics may be further altered by the presence of a competitor. We conducted a greenhouse experiment where we grew native Stipa pulchra and exotic Avena fatua, alone and in competition, in soils inoculated with conspecific and heterospecific soil microbial communities conditioned in low, ambient and high N en

SUBMITTER: Larios L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4287689 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature