Plant community composition steers grassland vegetation via soil legacy effects.

Robin Heinen, S Emilia Hannula, Jonathan R De Long, Martine Huberty, Renske Jongen, Anna Kielak, Katja Steinauer, Feng Zhu, T Martijn Bezemer

Journal: Ecology letters 2020;23(6):973-982

PMID: 32266749

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Abstract

Soil legacy effects are commonly highlighted as drivers of plant community dynamics and species co-existence. However, experimental evidence for soil legacy effects of conditioning plant communities on responding plant communities under natural conditions is lacking. We conditioned 192 grassland plots using six different plant communities with different ratios of grasses and forbs and for different durations. Soil microbial legacies were evident for soil fungi, but not for soil bacteria, while soil abiotic parameters did not significantly change in response to conditioning. The soil legacies affected the composition of the succeeding vegetation. Plant communities with different ratios of grasses and forbs left soil legacies that negatively affected succeeding plants of the same functional type. We conclude that fungal-mediated soil legacy effects play a significant role in vegetation assembly of natural plant communities.

Address: Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, P.O. Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, The Netherlands.; Institute of Biology, Section Plant Ecology and Phytochemistry, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9505, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water Resources, Hebei Key Laboratory of Soil Ecology, Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetic and Developmental Biology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 286 Huaizhong Road, 050021, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China.

DOI: 10.1111/ele.13497

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MeSH Terms: Fungi, Grassland, Plants, Soil, Soil Microbiology