Relatedness is a poor predictor of negative plant-soil feedbacks.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the mechanisms underlying negative plant-soil feedbacks remains a critical challenge in plant ecology. If closely related species are more similar, then phylogeny could be used as a predictor for plant species interactions, simplifying our understanding of how plant-soil feedbacks structure plant communities, underlie invasive species dynamics, or reduce agricultural productivity. Here, we test the utility of phylogeny for predicting plant-soil feedbacks by undertaking a hierarchical Bayesian meta-analysis on all available pairwise plant-soil feedback experiments conducted over the last two decades, including 133 plant species in 329 pairwise interactions. We found that the sign and magnitude of plant-soil feedback effects were not explained by the phylogenetic distance separ

SUBMITTER: Mehrabi Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4303931 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature