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85 results for “soil biota”
Temporal asynchrony of plant and soil biota determines ecosystem multifunctional stability
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Community-level interactions between plants and soil biota during range expansion
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Soil Biota Responses to Short-Term Soil Manipulation Experiment
A short-term soil manipulation experiment has been conducted as part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project. The response of soil organisms (nematodes, rotifers and tardigrades) to the treatments is monitored by sampling soil following various treatment applications. Samples were taken on November 13, 1995, November 17, 1995, November 24, 1995 and December 11, 1995.
Data from: Resistance of soil biota and plant growth to disturbance increases with plant diversity
Plant diversity is critical to the functioning of ecosystems, potentially mediated in part by interactions with soil biota. Here, we characterized multiple groups of soil biota across a plant diversity gradient in a long-term experiment. We then subjected soil samples taken along this gradient to drought, freezing, and a mechanical disturbance to test how plant diversity affects the responses of soil biota and growth of a focal plant to these disturbances. High plant diversity resulted in soils that were dominated by fungi and associated soil biota, including increased arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and reduced plant-feeding nematodes. Disturbance effects on the soil biota were reduced when plant diversity was high, resulting in higher growth of the focal plant in all but the frozen soils. These results highlight the importance of plant diversity for soil communities and their resistance to disturbance, with potential feedback effects on plant productivity.
Sympatric pairings of dryland grass populations, mycorrhizal fungi, and associated soil biota enhance mutualism and ameliorate drought stress
<p>1. There is evidence that the distribution of ecotypes of plants and their symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and other associated soil biota may be structured by the availability of essential soil nutrients; and that locally adapted partnerships most successfully acquire limiting nutrients. This study tests the hypotheses that plant genotypes are adapted to the water availability of their local environment, and this adaptation involves associations with local soil biota, including AM fungi. </p> <p>2. We grew semi-arid Bouteloua gracilis ecotypes from relatively wet and dry sites, with either sympatric or allopatric soil inoculum under moderate and extreme soil drying treatments to examine 1) how varying degrees of water limitation influence grass responses to soil biota, and 2) the relationship between AM fungal structures and these responses. </p> <p>3. Under extreme soil drying, the dry-site ecotype tended to perform better than the wet-site ecotype. Both ecotypes performed best in either drying treatment when inoculated with their sympatric soil biota. Sympatric pairings produced more AM fungal hyphae, arbuscules and dark septate fungi. Extreme soil drying tended to accentuate these apparent benefits of sympatry to both plants and fungal symbionts, relative to the moderate drying treatment. </p> <p>4. Our findings support the hypothesis that AM symbioses help Bouteloua gracilis ecotypes adapt to local water availability. This conclusion is based on the observations that as water became increasingly limited, sympatric partnerships produced more AM fungal hyphae and arbuscules and fewer vesicles. The abundances of hyphae and arbuscules were positively correlated with plant growth, suggesting that in sympatric pairs of plants and AM fungi, allocation to fungal structures is optimized to maximize benefits and minimize the costs of the symbioses. This provides strong evidence that co-adaptation among plants and their associated AM fungi can ameliorate drought stress.</p> <p>5. Synthesis: Our study documents the role of locally adapted soil borne plant symbionts in ameliorating water stress. We found a relationship between AM fungal structures in roots and plant performance. Generally, plants and fungi from the same site resulted in more positive effects on plant growth.</p>
Data from: Do soil biota influence the outcome of novel interactions between plant competitors?
1. Species are shifting their ranges, for example to higher elevations, in response to climate change. Different plant species and soil microbiota will likely shift their ranges at different rates, giving rise to novel communities of plants and soil organisms. However, the ecological consequences of such novel plant-soil interactions are poorly understood. We experimentally simulated scenarios for novel interactions arising between high- and low elevation plants and soil biota following asynchronous climate change range shifts, asking to what extent the ability of plants to coexist depends on the origin of the soil biota. 2. In a greenhouse experiment, we grew pairs of low- (Poa trivialis and Plantago lanceolata) and high- (Poa alpina and Plantago alpina) elevation plant species alone and against a density gradient of con- or heterospecific neighbours. Plants grew on sterilized field soil that was inoculated with a soil community sampled from either low- or high elevation in the western Swiss Alps. We used the experiment to parameterize competition models, from which we predicted the population-level outcomes of competition in the presence of the different soil biota. 3. In the absence of neighbours, three of the four species produced more biomass with the low elevation soil biota. As a result of generally similar responses across plant species, soil biota tended not to affect plant interaction outcomes, with the low elevation species generally predicted to competitively exclude high elevation species irrespective of the soil biota origin. However, the low elevation grass Poa trivialis was only able to invade communities of Poa alpina in the presence of a low elevation soil biota. This suggests that, at least in some cases, the outcome of novel competitive interactions following climate change will depend on whether shifts in the distribution of plant and soil organisms are asynchronous. 4. Synthesis. Our results indicate that the changing soil communities that plants encounter during range expansion can influence plant performance. However, this is only likely to alter our expectations for the ability of plants to coexist following climate change if plant species respond differently to the change in the soil community.
Data from: Plant neighbours rather than soil biota determine impact of an alien plant invader
1. Various factors have been shown contributing to the ecosystem impact of invasive alien plants, but their relative importance remains unclear. We focused on the effects of neighbouring plant community and soil biota as these biotic factors have been repeatedly put forward to explain invasion success (e.g. as components of the novel weapons and of the biotic release hypothesis). 2. To assess their relative importance in explaining the high impact of Centaurea stoebe during the invasion of new sites in the introduced range, we conducted a greenhouse experiment with both European (EU) and North American (NA) tetraploid C. stoebe competing with/without EU vs. NA neighbouring community and with the two neighbouring communities growing without C. stoebe. Plants were grown in sterilized commercial soil inoculated with naïve soil (from rhizosphere of plants other than C. stoebe) originating either from the home EU or the introduced NA range and half of which was sterilized to remove soil biota. 3. In the competition pots, relative competitive ability (difference between the relative growth rates of C. stoebe and neighbouring community) and impact level (biomass of the neighbouring community relative to that in non-competition pots) of C. stoebe was significantly higher when grown with the NA than with the EU neighbouring community, although growth rates of EU and NA neighbouring communities did not differ in the non-competition pots. Both soil origin and C. stoebe origin had no effect on these processes. Soil sterilization increased growth of both C. stoebe and neighbouring communities, but had only a moderate effect on impact level and type, and no effect on the relative competitive ability of C. stoebe. 4. These results suggest that during the colonization of new sites in North American grasslands, the impact of C. stoebe is strongly driven by reduced competitive ability of NA neighbours compared with EU neighbours, while altered biotic soil conditions in the introduced range and post-introduction evolutionary changes in the invader are of less importance. This differential impact appears to be due to inherently different mechanisms underlying the competitive interactions between EU and NA neighbouring communities when grown with C. stoebe.
Data from: Soil biota and chemical interactions promote co-existence in co-evolved grassland communities
1. Plant populations can exhibit local adaptation to their abiotic environment, such as climate and soil properties, as well as biotic components such as the chemical signatures of dominant plant species and mutualistic and pathogenic microbial populations. While patterns of local adaptation in individual species are widely recorded, the importance of microevolutionary processes for plant community assembly and function is poorly understood. 2. Here we examined how a history of long-term co-existence, and thus potential for local co-adaptation, influenced the process of plant community assembly. Soil inocula and seeds of eight plant species were collected from three calcareous grasslands with a long history of grazing within a single geographical region. Mesocosm communities were established using local genotypes from a single site or an artificial mixture of genotypes from two different sites. To investigate the role of root exudates and local ("home") and non-local ("away") soil biota as mediators of plant species co-existence, the population origin treatment was combined with the addition of activated carbon, which is known to adsorb exudates from soil, and sterilisation of soil inocula. Individual-, species- and mesocosm-level responses were measured over the course of three growing seasons. 3. We found that root exudates promoted seedling survival, species co-existence and productivity in assemblages of genotypes originating from the same community but had a weak impact in mixed, novel communities. Soil biota promoted the growth of subordinate forbs and restrained the growth of dominant graminoids, particularly in communities composed of local genotypes. The effects of population origin were significant in the first two years of the experiment but were not detectable in the third year when interbreeding and new seedling establishment took place. Plant genotypes coupled with "home" microbial inoculum experienced a stronger reduction in growth compared with genotypes exposed to "away" inoculum, indicating that plants experienced home-field disadvantage in interactions with soil biota. 4. Synthesis. Our study demonstrates that the mechanisms of initial grassland community assembly depend on community history, with belowground chemical interactions and plant interactions with soil biota becoming stronger drivers of dynamics in established and potentially co-evolved communities.
Shift in competitive ability mediated by soil biota in an invasive plant
<p>This dataset contains data from a greenhouse experiment described in the paper: Huang F, Huang Q, Gan X, Zhang W, Guo Y and Huang Y. (2021) Shift in competitive ability mediated by soil biota in an invasive plant. Ecology and Evolution, DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8287.</p> <p>This experiment investigated the interactive effects of competition environment and soil biota on competitive ability of an invasive plant <em>Mikania micrantha</em>. The experimental design contained a combination of three factors: soil treatment (live soil vs. sterilized soil), competition treatment (grown in isolation, with intraspecific competitors and interspecific competitors) and soil source (from three invaded sites), on the growth and competitive performance of seven <em>M. micrantha</em> populations varying in their field conspecific and heterospecific abundance.</p> <p>The main results of this experiment are that, with increasing conspecific abundance and decreasing heterospecific abundance, (1) <em>M. micrantha</em> increased intraspecific competition tolerance and intra- vs. interspecific competitive ability, but decreased interspecific competition tolerance; (2) <em>M. micrantha</em> increased tolerance of negative soil biota effect; (3) interspecific competition tolerance of <em>M. micrantha </em>was increasingly suppressed by the presence of soil biota, but intraspecific competition tolerance was less affected.</p>
Soil biota is decisive for overyielding in intercropping under low phosphorus conditions
<p><span>Cereal/legume intercropping typically increase crop yield, however, the mechanisms </span><span>through which soil microbes </span><span>mediate overyielding in intercropping under different nutrient availability remain elusive.</span></p> <p><span>Here we examined the effect of soil biota and phosphate (P) availability on intercropping advantages in wheat (<em>Triticum aestivum</em>) /faba bean (<em>Vicia faba</em>) systems using a pot experiment consisting of soil sterilization treatment and different P supply levels. A complementary experiment on the contribution of different microbial groups was also included using the removal method.</span></p> <p><span>Intercropping advantage was observed only in the presence of microbes and was mainly associated with increase of wheat biomass. </span><span>Overyielding</span><span> effect was stronger under low-P than high-P conditions, and </span><span>was negatively correlated with P availability and the effect of soil biota in the monoculture</span><span>. The effect was likely related to</span><span> </span><span>the enlarged active P pools and modified microbial communities associated with the alteration of rhizosphere traits (</span><span>protons and carboxylates</span><span>) by the neighboring faba bean. Similarly, simplification of soil microbes significantly increased the growth and P uptake of wheat plants while faba bean growth was less affected.</span></p> <p><em><span>Synthesis and applications.</span></em><span> </span><span>Our research provides compelling evidence that soil microbiome is important in driving intercropping overyielding by regulating interspecific interactions under nutrient limited conditions. These findings have important implications for crop species choice in designing and managing intercropping systems where crop functional traits, soil microbiome and nutrient management should be integrated in pursuit of sustainable agriculture</span><span>.</span></p>
Sympatric soil biota mitigate a warmer-drier climate for Bouteloua gracilis
<p>Climate change is altering temperature and precipitation, resulting in widespread plant mortality and shifts in plant distributions. Plants growing in soil types with low water holding capacity may experience intensified effects of reduced water availability as a result of climate change. Furthermore, complex biotic interactions between plants and soil organisms may mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change. This three-year field experiment observed the performance of Bouteloua gracilis ecotypes that were transplanted across an environmental gradient with either sympatric soil from the seed source location or allopatric soil from the location that plants were transplanted into. We also inoculated plants with either sympatric or allopatric soil biotic communities to test: 1) how changes in climate alone influence plant growth, 2) how soil types interact with climate to influence plant growth, and 3) the role of soil biota in mitigating plant migration to novel environments. As expected, plants moved to cooler-wetter sites exhibited enhanced growth; however, plants moved to warmer-drier sites responded variably depending on the provenance of their soil and inoculum. Soil and inoculum provenance had little influence on the performance of plants moved to cooler-wetter sites, but at warmer-drier sites they were important predictors of plant biomass, seed set and specific leaf area. Specifically, transplants inoculated with their sympatric soil biota and grown in their sympatric soil were as large or larger than reference plants grown at the seed source locations, however, individuals inoculated with allopatric soil biota were smaller than reference site individuals at warmer, drier sites. These findings demonstrate complicated plant responses to various aspects of environmental novelty where communities of soil organisms may help ameliorate stress. The belowground microbiome of plants should be considered to more accurately predict the responses of vegetation to climate change.</p>
Data from: Soil biota suppress positive plant diversity effects on productivity at high but not low soil fertility
1. Plant community productivity commonly increases with increasing plant diversity, which is explained by complementarity among plant species in resource utilization (complementarity effect), or by selection of particularly productive plant species in diverse plant communities (selection effect). Recent studies have also shown that soil biota can drive the positive plant diversity–productivity relationship by suppressing productivity more in low- than in high-diversity plant communities. However, much remains unknown about whether soil fertility plays a role in determining how soil biota affect plant diversity–productivity relationships. 2. We hypothesized that under high soil fertility conditions, negative soil biota effects dominate, which reduces plant monoculture biomass more than that of high-diversity plant communities. Conversely, under low soil fertility conditions, we hypothesized positive soil biota effects dominate, which facilitates plant resource partitioning and enhances community-level biomass in high-diversity plant communities. Hence we expected positive plant diversity–community productivity relationships under low and high soil fertility conditions but caused by different mechanisms. 3. We tested these hypotheses using woody seedlings and set up plant assemblages with four species richness levels (one, two, four and eight species), and grew them in sterilized and unsterilized (sterilized soil + living soil inoculum) soils at two nutrient levels (low vs. high fertility). 4. We found that at high fertility negative soil biota effects dominated and suppressed plant community biomass more in high-diversity plant communities than in monocultures, resulting in reduced complementarity effects of diverse plant communities and a non-significant plant species richness–community biomass relationship in unsterilized soil. Whereas at low fertility soil biota had net neutral to positive effects on plant community biomass but the beneficial effects did not increase with increasing plant species richness. Instead, soil biota neutrally affected the positive plant species richness–community biomass relationship, presumably due to non-specific effects of beneficial soil biota. 5. Synthesis. Soil biota and soil fertility interactively determine plant species richness–community biomass relationships. Moreover, soil biota modulate the complementary resource use among plant species. These findings suggest that environmental context plays an important role in determining whether and how soil biota generate the biodiversity–productivity relationship. Future studies would benefit from revealing the mechanisms underlying the interactive effects of soil biota, soil fertility, and plant diversity on ecosystem functioning.
Data for: Plant-soil biota interactions explain shifts in plant community composition under global change
<p>1. Plant-soil biota interactions play a crucial role in the assembly of plant communities and the maintenance of plant species diversity. However, few studies have tested how the effect of soil biota on plant species and communities depend on environmental context and whether shifts in plant community composition caused by environmental change are associated with variation in plant-soil biota interactions. 2. We combined a field experiment in a Tibetan alpine meadow and a greenhouse experiment with factorial combinations of nitrogen (N) enrichment and warming to examine the role of plant-soil biota interactions in plant community dynamics. 3. The results showed that plant relative abundances were negatively correlated with the net effects of soil biota on plant growth but only under ambient field conditions. Warming and N-enrichment alleviated the negative soil biota effects in the greenhouse, and changed plant community composition and reduced species diversity in the field. Importantly, changes in soil biota effects on plant growth were positively correlated with changes in plant relative abundances caused by warming and N-enrichment in field. In a parallel field experiment, the diversity of mycorrhizal fungi increased while the diversity of fungal pathogens remained unchanged under warming and N-enrichment, indicating that soil biodiversity may play a critical role in plant responses to environmental change. 4. This study empirically demonstrates that altered plant-soil biota interactions explain shifts in plant community composition under global change, providing new insights into the mechanisms of diversity loss in a changing world.</p>
Data from: Synergistic effects of canopy chemistry and autogenic soil biota on a global invader
<p><span>Soil biota have strong effects on plants, but we have a poor understanding of how plant chemistry might modify these effects. We examined the effect of soil biota associated with an exotic invasive tree, <em>Prosopis juliflora</em>, vs. that associated with native species, from seven sites across India on conspecifics and two other plant species. We then measured changes in species-specific soil biota effects (identified as plant-soil feedbacks, PSFs) when leaf leachate from <em>P. juliflora</em> or from native plant species was added to soil containing respective </span><span>live and sterile soil inoculum.</span></p> <p><span>We quantified the amino acid L-tryptophan from leaf leachate of <em>P. juliflora</em>, <em>Leucaena leucocephala</em> (another invader), and two native species. We also tested effects of <em>P. juliflora</em> or native species soil inoculum amendment of tryptophan on <em>P. juliflora</em>, <em>P. cineraria,</em> and <em>L. leucocephala </em>across seven sites. We then quantified the microbially metabolized derivatives of tryptophan, phytohormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), and intermediates after adding tryptophan into <em>P. juliflora</em> and native soils.</span></p> <p><span>Soil biota associated with <em>P. juliflora</em> generated positive effects on conspecifics and <em>L. leucocephala</em>, but negative effects on the native congener <em>P. cineraria</em>. When <em>P. juliflora</em> leaf leachate was added to soil with live <em>P. juliflora</em> inoculum, PSFs became more positive for <em>P. juliflora </em>and other species, compared to leaf leachate-amended with sterile soil inoculum. </span><span>Native leaf leachate interacted weakly with soil biota to impact biomass of conspecifics and heterospecifics. </span></p> <p><span>There was roughly 10x more tryptophan in the </span><span>leaf leachate of <em>P. juliflora </em>than in the leaf leachate of other species. Tryptophan generally increased positive PSFs associated with <em>P. juliflora </em>relative to soil biota associated with other plant species. When tryptophan was added to live <em>P. juliflora</em> soil, IAA and its intermediates were produced at five of seven sites, and at four of these sites soil biota from <em>P. juliflora</em> had positive PSFs. </span></p> <p><span><strong>Synthesis</strong>. These results provide the first experimental evidence that a chemical leached from the leaves of an invader regulates PSFs. Our results indicate that canopy effects and PSFs, which are usually studied independently, can interact in ways that strongly affect conspecifics and neighbouring species.</span></p>
Data from: Plant neighbours rather than soil biota determine impact of an alien plant invader
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Soil biota is decisive for overyielding in intercropping under low phosphorus conditions
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Data for: Plant-soil biota interactions explain shifts in plant community composition under global change
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Shift in competitive ability mediated by soil biota in an invasive plant
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Data from: Soil biota and chemical interactions promote co-existence in co-evolved grassland communities
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Data from: Do soil biota influence the outcome of novel interactions between plant competitors?
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