Abstract
Spatial heterogeneity in soil nutrient availability can influence performance of invasive plant species under competition-free environments. However, little was known about whether invasive plants perform better under heterogeneous than under homogeneous soil nutrient conditions in competition with native plant communities. We conducted a multi-species greenhouse experiment to test the effect of soil nutrient heterogeneity on the growth and invasion success of alien plants in a native plant community. We grew ten alien invasive plant species that are common in China under a homogeneous or heterogeneous environment alone or together with a community consisting of six native plant species from China. Compared with the homogeneous soil condition, the heterogeneous soil condition significantly increased aboveground biomass of the invasive plants. However, soil nutrient heterogeneity did not affect the relative abundance of the invasive species, as measured by the ratio of aboveground biomass of the invasive species to total aboveground biomass of the whole community. There were no significant interactive effects of soil nutrient heterogeneity and competition from the native community on aboveground biomass of the invasive plants and also no significant effects of soil nutrient heterogeneity on its relative abundance. Our results indicate that soil nutrient heterogeneity has a positive effect on the growth of invasive plants in general, but do not support the idea that soil nutrient heterogeneity favors the invasion success of exotic plant species in native plant communities.
Highlights
Soil nutrients are generally spatially heterogeneously distributed in nature, and such soil nutrient heterogeneity occurs at different scales relevant to plant growth and distribution (Jackson and Caldwell, 1993a; Stein et al, 2014; Brezina et al, 2019)
There was no interactive effect of soil nutrient heterogeneity and competition from the native community on aboveground biomass of invasive species (Table 2)
Spatial heterogeneity of environmental factors are common in nature (Jackson and Caldwell, 1993b; Alpert and Mooney, 1996; Liu et al, 2003; Liang et al, 2007; Gao et al, 2021), and may influence exotic plant invasions (Keser et al, 2015; Chen et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017; Liang et al, 2020)
Summary
Soil nutrients are generally spatially heterogeneously distributed in nature, and such soil nutrient heterogeneity occurs at different scales relevant to plant growth and distribution (Jackson and Caldwell, 1993a; Stein et al, 2014; Brezina et al, 2019). Plant species frequently perform better in environments with a heterogeneous than with a homogenous soil nutrient supply, even though the total amount of nutrients are the same in the two environments (Cahill et al, 2010; Zhou et al, 2012; Liu et al, 2020). This is because plants have a foraging response and can capture more resources from resource-rich patches in heterogeneous environments (Robinson et al, 1999; James et al, 2009; Gao et al, 2012). Since invasive plants can benefit more from environmental heterogeneity than natives (Wang et al, 2017; Chen et al, 2019), we hypothesized that environmental heterogeneity can increase the competitive ability of invasive species more than that of native species so that it can promote the invasion success of exotic plants in native plant communities
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
