Greenhouse- and Field-Measured Plant-Soil Feedbacks Are Not Correlated

Forero, Leslie E.; Grenzer, Josephine; Heinze, Johannes; Schittko, Conrad; Kulmatiski, Andrew

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2019.00184

Cited by 71 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…It is important to note that only 9% of these studies were conducted in the field, suggesting that we have little inference for the strength or direction that environmental variation will demonstrate when interacting with PSF to affect plant growth. The few interactive effects shown here both support and contradict studies showing that PSF can differ between greenhouse and field experiments in different environments (Putten et al, 2016;Schittko et al, 2016;Florianová and Münzbergová, 2018;Heinze and Joshi, 2018;Kivlin et al, 2018) demonstrating how little is understood about the function of PSF in nature (Forero et al, 2019).…”

Section: Experiments Location and Soil Conditioning Source Affect Thesupporting

confidence: 53%

“…An experiment by Schittko et al (2016) for example, found that the majority of plant species in an experiment exhibited positive PSF under controlled greenhouse conditions, but did not exhibit any significant PSF under natural field conditions. A meta-analysis of the PSF literature seems to corroborate this observation-experiments conducted in the greenhouse often produce larger effect sizes in PSF than those conducted in the field Forero et al, 2019). This broad pattern likely suggests that the true importance of PSF on the landscape is different than what is measured in greenhouse studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Yet most PSF experiments are rarely conducted under the environmental conditions where large-scale ecological and evolutionary mechanisms occur, that is, in the field. Various findings indicate differences in PSF between greenhouse and field experiments (Putten et al, 2016;Schittko et al, 2016;Florianová and Münzbergová, 2018;Heinze and Joshi, 2018;Kivlin et al, 2018;Forero et al, 2019) which suggest that inferences from greenhouse studies may not accurately represent how PSF functions on the landscape (Kulmatiski and Kardol, 2008;Putten et al, 2013Putten et al, , 2016Smith-Ramesh and Reynolds, 2017;Crawford et al, 2019;De Long et al, 2019). While greenhouse experiments have the advantage of maintaining control over non-focal variables and are crucial for confirming and falsifying mechanisms, recent field based PSF research has demonstrated that thoughtful field study designs can generate tractable and interesting results (Long et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predicting Plant-Soil Feedback in the Field: Meta-Analysis Reveals That Competition and Environmental Stress Differentially Influence PSF

et al. 2020

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Past research on plant-soil feedbacks (PSF), largely undertaken in highly controlled greenhouse conditions, has established that plant species differentially alter abiotic and biotic soil conditions that in turn affect growth of other conspecific and heterospecific individuals in that soil. Yet, whether feedbacks under controlled greenhouse conditions reflect feedbacks in natural environments where plants are exposed to a range of abiotic and biotic pressures is still unresolved. To address how environmental context affects PSF, we conducted a meta-analysis of previously published studies that examined plant growth responses to multiple forms of competition, stress, and disturbance across various PSF methodology. We asked the following questions: (1) Can competition, stress, and disturbance alter the direction and/or strength of PSF? (2) Do particular types of competition, stress, or disturbance affect the direction and/or strength of PSF more than others? and (3) Do methods of conducting PSF research (i.e., greenhouse vs. field experiments and whether the source of soil inoculum conditioning is from the field vs. greenhouse) affect plant growth responses to PSF or competition, stress, and disturbance, or their interactions? We discovered four patterns that may be predictive of what future PSF studies conducted under more realistic conditions might reveal. First, relatively little is known about how PSF responds to environmental stress and disturbance compared to plant-plant competition. Second, specific types of competition enhanced negative effects of soil microbes on plant growth, and specific environmental stressors enhanced positive effects of soil microbes on plant growth. Third, whether PSF experiments are conducted in the field or greenhouse can change plant growth responses. And, fourth, how the soil conditioning phase is conducted can change plant growth responses. With more detail than previously shown, these results confirm that environmental context writ large can change plant growth responses in PSF Beals et al. PSF Differs With Competition, Stress experiments. These data should aid theory and predictions for conservation and restoration applications by showing the relative importance of competition, stress, and disturbance in PSF studies over time. Lastly, these data demonstrate how variation in experimental methods can alter interpretation and conclusions of PSF studies.

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Section: Experiments Location and Soil Conditioning Source Affect Thesupporting

confidence: 53%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Predicting Plant-Soil Feedback in the Field: Meta-Analysis Reveals That Competition and Environmental Stress Differentially Influence PSF

et al. 2020

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“…Furthermore, we suggest that DNA-sequencing techniques of soil micro-organisms will be needed to advance our understanding of the role of soil biota in wind mediated PSF–root-morphology interactions. As wind is an environmental factor typically excluded under greenhouse conditions ( Heinze et al 2016 ; Forero et al 2019 ) our results provide a potential explanation for reported differences in PSFs between greenhouse and field. Overall, wind-induced changes in PSFs were not very strong in the current short-term study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…the outcome of PSFs). Furthermore, we aimed to test these effects under realistic wind conditions and not with electric fans in a greenhouse where natural wind is mostly excluded ( Heinze et al 2016 ; Forero et al 2019 ). Therefore, we performed a field experiment with four grassland plant species and investigated above- and belowground biomass, root morphological traits of fine roots and PSFs at two different wind levels to answer the following questions:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind intensity affects fine root morphological traits with consequences for plant-soil feedback effects

et al. 2020

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Wind influences the development, architecture and morphology of plant roots and may modify subsequent interactions between plants and soil (plant-soil feedbacks – PSFs). However, information on wind effects on fine root-morphology is scarce and the extent to which wind changes plant-soil interactions remains unclear. Therefore, we investigated the effects of two wind intensity levels by manipulating surrounding vegetation height in a grassland PSF field-experiment. We grew four common plant species (two grasses and two non-leguminous forbs) with soil biota either previously conditioned by these or other species and tested the effect of wind on root:shoot ratio, fine root morphological traits as well as the outcome for PSFs. Wind intensity did not affect biomass allocation (i.e. root:shoot ratio) in any species. However, fine-root morphology of all species changed under high wind intensity. High wind intensity increased specific root length and surface area and decreased root tissue density, especially in the two grasses. Similarly, the direction of PSFs changed under high wind intensity in all four species, but differences in biomass production on the different soils between high and low wind intensity were marginal and most pronounced when comparing grasses with forbs. Because soils did not differ in plant-available nor total nutrient content, the results suggest that wind-induced changes in root morphology have the potential to influence plant-soil interactions. Linking wind-induced changes in fine-root morphology to effects on PSF improves our understanding of plant-soil interactions under changing environmental conditions.

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Globally, plant‐soil feedbacks are weak predictors of plant abundance

Reinhart

Bauer

McCarthy-Neumann

et al. 2021

Ecology and Evolution

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Plant‐soil feedbacks (PSFs) have been shown to strongly affect plant performance under controlled conditions, and PSFs are thought to have far reaching consequences for plant population dynamics and the structuring of plant communities. However, thus far the relationship between PSF and plant species abundance in the field is not consistent. Here, we synthesize PSF experiments from tropical forests to semiarid grasslands, and test for a positive relationship between plant abundance in the field and PSFs estimated from controlled bioassays. We meta‐analyzed results from 22 PSF experiments and found an overall positive correlation (0.12 ≤ truer¯ ≤ 0.32) between plant abundance in the field and PSFs across plant functional types (herbaceous and woody plants) but also variation by plant functional type. Thus, our analysis provides quantitative support that plant abundance has a general albeit weak positive relationship with PSFs across ecosystems. Overall, our results suggest that harmful soil biota tend to accumulate around and disproportionately impact species that are rare. However, data for the herbaceous species, which are most common in the literature, had no significant abundance‐PSFs relationship. Therefore, we conclude that further work is needed within and across biomes, succession stages and plant types, both under controlled and field conditions, while separating PSF effects from other drivers (e.g., herbivory, competition, disturbance) of plant abundance to tease apart the role of soil biota in causing patterns of plant rarity versus commonness.

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Greenhouse- and Field-Measured Plant-Soil Feedbacks Are Not Correlated

Cited by 71 publications

References 48 publications

Predicting Plant-Soil Feedback in the Field: Meta-Analysis Reveals That Competition and Environmental Stress Differentially Influence PSF

Predicting Plant-Soil Feedback in the Field: Meta-Analysis Reveals That Competition and Environmental Stress Differentially Influence PSF

Wind intensity affects fine root morphological traits with consequences for plant-soil feedback effects

Globally, plant‐soil feedbacks are weak predictors of plant abundance

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