Facilitation of invasive plants by soil biota becomes negative over time
in short-term
Abstract
Declining enemy release predicts that invasive plants accumulated more
soil natural enemies, and the increase in enemies may inhibit growth of
invasive plants themselves. But most studies focus on historical time
rather than short-term. We designed a fully crossed factorial
experiment, we grew individuals of four congeneric pairs of invasive and
native plant species in 2.5 L pots that contained live or sterilized
field soil under two harvest time (first vs second). Results shows that
soil microbes tended to have a slight positive effect on total biomass
of the native plant species over time in short-term, while the effect of
soil microbes on invasive plants as their total biomass tended to change
from promotion to inhibition over time in short-term. Overall, these
results suggest that regardless of the direction and strength of
plant-soil feedback on invasive plant species, invasive plant species
consistently may grow larger than co-occurring native plant species over
time in short-term.