Within‐species trade‐offs in plant‐stimulated soil enzyme activity and growth, flowering, and seed size

Abstract

Soil microbial communities affect species demographic rates of plants. In turn, plants influence the composition and function of the soil microbiome, potentially resulting in beneficial feedbacks that alter their fitness and establishment. For example, differences in the ability to stimulate soil enzyme activity among plant lineages may affect plant growth and reproduction. We used a common garden study to test differences in plant‐stimulated soil enzyme activity between lineages of the same species across developmental stages. Lineages employed different strategies whereby growth, days to flowering and seed size traded‐off with plant‐stimulated soil enzyme activity. Specifically, the smaller seeded lineage stimulated more enzyme activity at the early stage of development and flowered earlier while the larger seeded lineage sustained lower but consistent enzyme activity through development. We suggest that these lineages, which are both successful invaders, employ distinct strategies (a colonizer and a competitor) and differ in their influence on soil microbial activity. Synthesis. The ability to influence the soil microbial community by plants may be an important trait that trades off with growth, flowering, and seed size for promoting plant establishment, reproduction, and invasion.

Plant responses to diversity‐driven selection and associated rhizosphere microbial communities

“…Non-AMF rhizosphere microbial communities and their influence on plant growth can change over generations due to local natural selection processes (Gomola, McKay, Wallenstein, Wagg, & O'Brien, 2018;Lau & Lennon, 2011;Wagg et al, 2015). Therefore, inoculating plants with non-AMF microbial communities collected from plant monocultures should be more detrimental to plant growth if monocultures accumulate a greater abundance of pathogens.…”

Plant growth rate and nitrogen uptake shape rhizosphere bacterial community composition and activity in an agricultural field

“…Plant root activity, through root exudation, rhizodeposition and nutrient uptake, shifts the energetic and nutrient balance of rhizosphere soils (Hinsinger et al, 2009;Bell et al, 2015). Therefore, plant phenotypic variation in resource acquisition and use may offer a framework to understand plant species and genotype variation in rhizosphere effects (Zancarini et al, 2013;Gomola et al, 2018). Plants with high relative growth rate (RGR) frequently have higher rates of root exudation, and support increased growth and turnover of microbial populations in the rhizosphere (Blagodatskaya et al, 2014;Ka stovsk a et al, 2015).…”

Changes in Rhizosphere Soil Nutrients, Enzyme Activities, and Microbial Communities at Different Stages of Industrial Hemp Development

“…The outcome of this study revealed that the contents of alkaline protease, alkaline phosphatase, catalase, and sucrase increased with the increase in the growth stages (Table 3). This further indicated that industrial hemp could degrade macromolecules into small molecules through soil enzymes in a rhizosphere environment to support its own growth, thus regulating the cycle of soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus [34]. Earlier research has demonstrated a positive association of the activities of soil sucrase and soil alkaline phosphatase with SOC and microbial biomass, indicating that these components contain substrates that induce the synthesis of these enzymes [35].…”