Invasive plants and their root traits are linked to the homogenization of soil microbial communities across the United States

Abstract

Although the impacts of invasive plants on soil ecosystems are widespread, the role and impacts of invader root traits in structuring microbial communities remain poorly understood. Here, we present a macroecological study investigating how plant invaders and their root traits affect soil microbial communities, spanning data from 377 unique plots across the United States sampled multiple times, totaling 632 sampling events and 94 invasive plant species. We found that native and invasive plants harbor different root traits on average, with invasive plants possessing higher specific root lengths and native plants having higher root tissue density. We also show that soil microbial communities experiencing heavy plant invasions were more similar to each other in composition across ecosystem types and geographical regions than plots with higher proportions of native plants, which displayed highly variable microbial communities across the continent. Root traits of invasive plants in highly invaded plots explained two times more variation in microbial composition than native plants. This work represents an important step toward understanding macroscale and cross-scale patterns of the relationship between plant invasions, root traits, and soil microbial composition. Our findings provide insights into how invasive plants may impact ecosystem functioning at the macroscale via their homogenizing influence on microbial communities.