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Facilitation of invasive plants by soil biota becomes negative over time in short-term
  • Xue Zhang,
  • Haoran Bai
Xue Zhang

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Haoran Bai
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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.
02 Aug 2023Submitted to Oikos
02 Aug 2023Submission Checks Completed
02 Aug 2023Assigned to Editor
02 Aug 2023Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
16 Aug 2023Reviewer(s) Assigned