Abstract
Abstract Understanding the causes of variation in foliar plant metabolomes is essential for our understanding of ecological interactions between plants and other organisms. It is well‐accepted that foliar herbivory alters metabolites in leaves. However, soil (micro)organisms can also induce such changes. We generated plant‐specific soil legacies by growing 12 plant species individually in a common starting soil. Then we planted all plant species in all soils and exposed a subset to foliar herbivory. We then used 1H nuclear magnetic resonance to analyse the shoot metabolomes of all responding plants. Above‐ground herbivory and soil legacies altered shoot metabolomes. In most plant species, soil legacy more strongly affected shoot metabolomes than foliar herbivory. Synthesis. Our results show that plant‐induced changes in soil alter metabolomes of plants that grow later in those soils. Such below‐ground legacy effects can have far‐stretching consequences for above‐ground multitrophic interactions as these often depend on the plant chemical composition. Recently, plant–soil feedbacks have received considerable attention in ecological studies, and our study now highlights that these feedbacks can be an important determinant of the often unexplained intraspecific variation in chemical composition among plants.
Highlights
In natural systems, all organisms actively interact with other organisms and their surroundings
Our study shows that the composition of the metabolome of eight of the 12 response species depended on the soil the plant was growing in
It is well known that foliar herbivory causes considerable changes in plant metabolomes (Marti et al, 2013; Widarto et al, 2006), remarkably, we observed here that for most response plant species, soil conditioning explained more of the variation in the plant metabolome than did above-ground herbivory
Summary
All organisms actively interact with other organisms and their surroundings. Plant roots interact with soil-dwelling organisms such as microbes (e.g. pathogens and mycorrhizal fungi), nematodes and root feeding insects, and an increasing number of studies is showing that specific soil organisms such as insects or microbes can induce changes in the composition of plant-derived chemicals in the foliage (Bezemer & Van Dam, 2005; Etalo, Jeon, & Raaijmakers, 2018; Pieterse et al, 1998). Many grass species accumulate plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria below-ground (Latz et al, 2012) These bacteria can prime plants that grow later in that soils, resulting in changes in the composition or concentration of defence compounds in above-ground tissues (Pangesti et al, 2015; Van Oosten et al, 2008). They were collected from cabbage fields near the university
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