Soil biota composition and the performance of a noxious weed across its invaded range

Abstract

The success of invasive plant species is driven, in part, by feedback with soil ecosystems. Yet, how variation in belowground communities across latitudinal gradients affects invader distributions remains poorly understood. To determine the effect of soil communities on the performance of the noxious weed Cirsium arvense across its invaded range, we grew seedlings for 40 days in soils collected across a 699 km linear distance from both inside and outside established populations. We also described the mesofaunal and bacterial communities across all soil samples. We found that C. arvense typically performed better when grown in soils sourced from northern populations than from southern locations where it has a longer invasion history. We also found evidence that C. arvense performed best in soils sourced from outside invaded patches, although this was not consistent across all sites. The bacterial community showed a significant increase in the magnitude of compositional change in invaded sites at higher latitudes, while the mesofaunal community showed the opposite pattern. Bacterial community composition was significantly correlated with C. arvense performance, although mesofaunal community composition was not. Our results demonstrate that the interactions between an invasive plant and associated soil communities change across the invaded range, and the bacterial community in particular may affect variation in plant performance. Observed patterns may be caused by C.arvense presence and time since invasion allowing for an accumulation of species‐specific pathogens in southern soils, while the naïveté of northern soils to invasion results in a more responsive bacterial community. Although these interactions are difficult to predict, such effects could possibly facilitate the establishment of this exotic species to novel locations.

Diversity and composition of soil bacterial community respond to A. palmeri invasion under heterogeneous habitats

“…4). These bacteria have also been widely reported in the invasion areas of other alien plants, including Japanese barberry, Acacia dealbata and Cirsium arvense (Kamutando et al 2017;Coats et al 2014;Nunes et al 2019). Proteobacteria were the most dominant bacterial groups in this study, con rmed that Proteobacteria are the dominant bacterial community in terrestrial soil ecosystem (Bazylinski et al 2013).…”

The Rhizosphere Microbiome of Mikania micrantha Provides Insight Into Adaptation and Invasion

“…However, many plant-associated microbes were enriched in rhizospheres both in the pot experiment and the invaded site, and these genera were generally higher in the invaded field than those in the pot experiment, indicating their important roles in the natural environment. The interactions between an invasive plant and associated soil communities changed across the invaded range (Nunes et al, 2019). In our study, we found that there is a difference of M. micrantha rhizosphere between the pot experiment and the field site.…”

Release from Above- and Belowground Insect Herbivory Mediates Invasion Dynamics and Impact of an Exotic Plant

“…There is increasing evidence that belowground enemies can be as important for species co-existence and community dynamics as aboveground enemies [62] and may even drive the positive biodiversity-productivity relationships in native plant communities [63]. Nevertheless, surprisingly few studies have looked on enemy release from belowground enemies [52,64] and most of them concentrated on plant-soil feedback (e.g., [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72]. These studies frequently demonstrated that release from soil-borne pathogens may favor plant invasions [52,64], but the role of belowground insect herbivory is still insufficiently understood and studied.…”