Abstract
A fundamental question in ecology is which species will prevail over others amid changes in both environmental mean conditions and their variability. Although the widely accepted fluctuating resource hypothesis predicts that increases in mean resource availability and variability therein will promote nonnative plant invasion, it remains unclear to what extent these effects might be mediated by soil microbes. We grew eight invasive nonnative plant species as target plants in pot-mesocosms planted with five different synthetic native communities as competitors, and assigned them to eight combinations of two nutrient-fluctuation (constant vs. pulsed), two nutrient-availability (low vs. high) and two soil-microbe (living vs. sterilized) treatments. We found that when plants grew in sterilized soil, nutrient fluctuation promoted the dominance of nonnative plants under overall low nutrient availability, whereas the nutrient fluctuation had minimal effect under high nutrient availability. In contrast, when plants grew in living soil, nutrient fluctuation promoted the dominance of nonnative plants under high nutrient availability rather than under low nutrient availability. Analysis of the soil microbial community suggests that this might reflect that nutrient fluctuation strongly increased the relative abundance of the most dominant pathogenic fungal family or genus under high nutrient availability, while decreasing it under low nutrient availability. Our findings are the first to indicate that besides its direct effect, environmental variability could also indirectly affect plant invasion via changes in soil microbial communities.
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Claims 5
Claim · model-written summary
Nutrient fluctuation promoted nonnative plant dominance in sterilized soil with low nutrient availability.
Verbatim
e0“when plants grew in sterilized soil, nutrient fluctuation promoted the dominance of nonnative plants under overall low nutrient availability, whereas the nutrient fluctuation had minimal effect under high nutrient availability.”
Claim · model-written summary
Nutrient fluctuation had minimal effect on dominance in sterilized soil with high nutrient availability.
Verbatim
e0“when plants grew in sterilized soil, nutrient fluctuation promoted the dominance of nonnative plants under overall low nutrient availability, whereas the nutrient fluctuation had minimal effect under high nutrient availability.”
Claim · model-written summary
Nutrient fluctuation promoted nonnative plant dominance in living soil with high nutrient availability.
Verbatim
e0“when plants grew in living soil, nutrient fluctuation promoted the dominance of nonnative plants under high nutrient availability rather than under low nutrient availability.”
Claim · model-written summary
Nutrient fluctuation increased dominant pathogenic fungal abundance at high nutrient availability.
- Taxon
- plantt0
- Treatment
- nutrient fluctuatione0
- Interactor
- pathogenic fungal family or genuse0pathogen
- Outcome
- relative abundance of the most dominant pathogenic fungal family or genuse0
- Direction
- increasede0
- Qualifier
- high nutrient availabilitye0
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
e0“nutrient fluctuation strongly increased the relative abundance of the most dominant pathogenic fungal family or genus under high nutrient availability, while decreasing it under low nutrient availability.”
t0“plant invasion”
Claim · model-written summary
Nutrient fluctuation decreased dominant pathogenic fungal abundance at low nutrient availability.
- Taxon
- plantt0
- Treatment
- nutrient fluctuatione0
- Interactor
- pathogenic fungal family or genuse0pathogen
- Outcome
- relative abundance of the most dominant pathogenic fungal family or genuse0
- Direction
- decreasinge0
- Qualifier
- low nutrient availabilitye0
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
e0“nutrient fluctuation strongly increased the relative abundance of the most dominant pathogenic fungal family or genus under high nutrient availability, while decreasing it under low nutrient availability.”
t0“plant invasion”