Community‐level interactions between plants and soil biota during range expansion

Abstract

Plant species that expand their range in response to current climate change will encounter soil communities that may hinder, allow or even facilitate plant performance. It has been shown repeatedly for plant species originating from other continents that these plants are less hampered by soil communities from the new than from the original range. However, information about the interactions between intra‐continental range expanders and soil communities is sparse, especially at community level. Here we used a plant–soil feedback experiment approach to examine if the interactions between range expanders and soil communities change during range expansion. We grew communities of range‐expanding and native plant species with soil communities originating from the original and new range of range expanders. In these conditioned soils, we determined the composition of fungi and bacteria by high‐throughput amplicon sequencing of the ITS region and the 16S rRNA gene respectively. Nematode community composition was determined by microscopy‐based morphological identification. Then we tested how these soil communities influence the growth of subsequent communities of range expanders and natives. We found that after the conditioning phase soil bacterial, fungal and nematode communities differed by origin and by conditioning plant communities. Despite differences in bacterial, fungal and nematode communities between original and new range, soil origin did not influence the biomass production of plant communities. Both native and range expanding plant communities produced most above‐ground biomass in soils that were conditioned by plant communities distantly related to them. Synthesis. Communities of range‐expanding plant species shape specific soil communities in both original and new range soil. Plant–soil interactions of range expanders in communities can be similar to the ones of their closely related native plant species.

Effects of plant community history, soil legacy and plant diversity on soil microbial communities

“…The different responses of bacterial and fungal diversity in our study are in line with previous findings in the Jena Experiment (e.g. Dassen et al., 2017; Lange et al., 2015) and may indicate different specificity of interactions between plants and soil bacteria and fungi or competition between taxa of bacteria and fungi (Bahram et al., 2018; Koorem et al., 2020). The fungal communities in old soils could have represented specialized subsets of fungal species particularly suited for the corresponding plant community (Semchenko et al., 2018; Sosa‐Hernández et al., 2018).…”

Effects of plant community history, soil legacy and plant diversity on soil microbial communities

“…In contrast to bacterial richness, soil legacy did not increase fungal richness and even decreased fungal evenness. The different responses of bacterial and fungal diversity in our study are in line with previous findings in the Jena Experiment (e.g., Dassen et al, 2017; Lange et al, 2015) and may indicate different specificity of interactions between plants and soil bacteria and fungi or competition between taxa of bacteria and fungi (Bahram et al, 2018; Koorem et al, 2020). The fungal communities in old soils could have represented specialized subsets of fungal species particularly suited for the corresponding plant community (Semchenko et al, 2018; Sosa-Hernández et al, 2018).…”

Disentangling nematode and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community effect on the growth of range-expanding Centaurea stoebe in original and new range soil

“…Future studies should test the effect of soil communities from different locations within both ranges to validate the general nature of the patterns reported here. However, our results are in line with previous studies showing that soil communities from multiple locations in the original and new range have similar effect on the biomass production of rangeexpanding plant communities during soil conditioning (Koorem et al 2018) and feedback phase (Koorem et al 2020). The effect of soil communities reported in experimental studies may at least partly depend on the methodological approach (Wang et al 2018), in this study demonstrated by the negative effect of non-target soil microbes found in Experiment I that was not confirmed in Experiment II.…”