Fungal diversity regulates plant-soil feedbacks in temperate grassland

Semchenko, Marina; Leff, Jonathan W.; Lozano, Yudi M.; Saar, Sirgi; Davison, John; Wilkinson, Anna; Jackson, Benjamin G.; Pritchard, William J.; Long, Jonathan R. De; Oakley, Simon; Mason, Kelly E.; Ostle, Nicholas J.; Baggs, Elizabeth M.; Johnson, David; Fierer, Noah; Bardgett, Richard D.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau4578

Cited by 188 publications

(198 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…This is in strong agreement with recent findings that soil fungal communities are shaped over time by plants, whereas bacterial communities are shaped far less strongly by plants, and instead more by varying environmental conditions over time (Hannula et al 2019b). Soil legacy effects in natural plant communities are likely not driven by one taxon specifically, but rather by the composition of the soil fungal community as a whole (Semchenko et al 2018; Bennett & Klironomos 2018; Mommer et al 2018, but see Harrison & Bardgett, 2010). Importantly, we show that conditioning effects of plant communities on soil biota, outweigh the effects on soil abiotic parameters, and are drivers of soil legacy effects on plant growth in the field.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant community composition steers grassland vegetation via soil legacy effects

et al. 2020

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Soil legacy effects are commonly highlighted as drivers of plant community dynamics and species co-existence. However, experimental evidence for soil legacy effects of conditioning plant communities on responding plant communities under natural conditions is lacking. We conditioned 192 grassland plots using six different plant communities with different ratios of grasses and forbs and for different durations. Soil microbial legacies were evident for soil fungi, but not for soil bacteria, while soil abiotic parameters did not significantly change in response to conditioning. The soil legacies affected the composition of the succeeding vegetation. Plant communities with different ratios of grasses and forbs left soil legacies that negatively affected succeeding plants of the same functional type. We conclude that fungal-mediated soil legacy effects play a significant role in vegetation assembly of natural plant communities. and robin.heinen@tum.de † These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant community composition steers grassland vegetation via soil legacy effects

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“…4a). Saprophytic microbes have a wide range of functional abilities, and most soils contain most functional guilds of saprophytes (H€ attenschwiler et al 2005, Grau et al 2017, Semchenko et al 2018). The positive relationship, thus, supports the idea of a functional relationship between plants and microbes at the global scale Jackson 2006, Chen et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between plant diversity and soil microbial diversity vary across taxonomic groups and spatial scales

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Citation: Liu, L., K. Zhu, N. Wurzburger, and J. Zhang. 2020. Relationships between plant diversity and soil microbial diversity vary across taxonomic groups and spatial scales. Ecosphere 11(1):Abstract. Plant diversity has long been assumed to predict soil microbial diversity. However, contradictory results have been found when examining their relationships, particularly at broad spatial scales. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the patterns in the correlation between plant diversity and soil microbial diversity and the underlying factors driving the relationship. We collected correlation data from 84 studies covering more than 3900 natural terrestrial samples globally. Using the hierarchical mixed-effects model, we investigated factors including targeted taxonomic group, microbial examination method, sampling extent, biome type, soil type, and environmental factors to assess the patterns of the plant-microbial correlation and the determinants of their variations. We found that microbial richness displayed a modest but positive correlation with plant diversity (r = 0.333, CI = 0.220-0.437). In spite of variability among taxonomic groups and their relationship with plant diversity, positive correlations were more pronounced in the intermediate sampling extent of latitude and elevation coverage, and tropical forests. Among examined environmental factors, soil pH was negatively associated with the plant and soil microbial relationships at large spatial scales. The plant-microbial correlation appears more sensitive to edaphic factor variation in the poor nutrients and soil less compact systems. Collectively, our results point to key differences across taxonomic groups, spatial scales and biomes, and the modulating effects of climate and soil. The findings shed light on our deep understanding in plant-microbial diversity relationships at broad spatial scales and ecosystem sensitivity to biodiversity loss and environmental change.

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“…Positive biotic feedbacks can result from the accumulation of symbiotic mutualists in the rhizosphere such as N 2 ‐fixing rhizobia and mycorrhizal fungi (Eisenhauer, ; Semchenko et al, ; van der Putten et al, ; Wright et al, ). Because these mutualists are able to increase the amount of resources that can be taken up by plants (Barry et al, ; Wright et al, ), their accumulation in the rhizosphere of early‐arriving species could lead to increased establishment of species arriving later during plant community assembly.…”

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confidence: 99%

When history matters: The overlooked role of priority effects in grassland overyielding

et al. 2019

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Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments have shown that plant species and functional group richness are important drivers of grassland productivity, but the impact that plant order of arrival (i.e. priority effects) has on grassland overyielding and its drivers (complementarity and dominance effects) has been overlooked so far. Using species‐specific plant biomass data collected in mixture and monoculture plots of a grassland field experiment (Jülich Priority Effect experiment) that manipulated the order of arrival of three plant functional groups (forbs, grasses and legumes), we quantified net biodiversity effects (overyielding) as well as complementarity and dominance effects in mixtures one and 2 years after sowing. In this experiment, priority effects were created by sowing one functional group 6 weeks before the two others. First, we tested whether plant order of arrival affected overyielding, complementarity and dominance effects. Second, we investigated whether the magnitude of net biodiversity, complementarity and dominance effects was dependent on the strength and direction of priority effects. We found that complementarity and dominance effects were affected by plant order of arrival during community assembly. In addition, we found that moving from negative to positive priority effects increased grassland overyielding, mainly via increased complementarity effects. These results highlight the need to combine biodiversity and assembly approaches in future ecosystem functioning research, as this will increase the predictive power of community ecology in conservation and ecological restoration. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Fungal diversity regulates plant-soil feedbacks in temperate grassland

Abstract: Plant growth dynamics are shaped by the diversity of associating pathogenic, saprotrophic, and mutualistic soil fungi.

Cited by 188 publications

References 47 publications

Plant community composition steers grassland vegetation via soil legacy effects

Plant community composition steers grassland vegetation via soil legacy effects

Relationships between plant diversity and soil microbial diversity vary across taxonomic groups and spatial scales

When history matters: The overlooked role of priority effects in grassland overyielding

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