Abstract
One of the processes that may play a key role in plant species coexistence and ecosystem functioning is plant–soil feedback, the effect of plants on associated soil communities and the resulting feedback on plant performance. Plant–soil feedback at the interspecific level (comparing growth on own soil with growth on soil from different species) has been studied extensively, while plant–soil feedback at the intraspecific level (comparing growth on own soil with growth on soil from different accessions within a species) has only recently gained attention. Very few studies have investigated the direction and strength of feedback among different taxonomic levels, and initial results have been inconclusive, discussing phylogeny, and morphology as possible determinants. To test our hypotheses that the strength of negative feedback on plant performance increases with increasing taxonomic level and that this relationship is explained by morphological similarities, we conducted a greenhouse experiment using species assigned to three taxonomic levels (intraspecific, interspecific, and functional group level). We measured certain fitness‐related aboveground traits and used them along literature‐derived traits to determine the influence of morphological similarities on the strength and direction of the feedback. We found that the average strength of negative feedback increased from the intraspecific over the interspecific to the functional group level. However, individual accessions and species differed in the direction and strength of the feedback. None of our results could be explained by morphological dissimilarities or individual traits. Synthesis. Our results indicate that negative plant–soil feedback is stronger if the involved plants belong to more distantly related species. We conclude that the taxonomic level is an important factor in the maintenance of plant coexistence with plant–soil feedback as a potential stabilizing mechanism and should be addressed explicitly in coexistence research, while the traits considered here seem to play a minor role.
Highlights
The exact mechanisms maintaining species coexistence remain largely unresolved
To test our hypotheses that the strength of negative feedback on plant performance increases with increasing taxonomic level and that this relationship is explained by morphological similarities, we conducted a greenhouse experiment using species assigned to three taxonomic levels
Negative plant–soil feedback operated in our experiment, partly confirming our first hypothesis
Summary
The exact mechanisms maintaining species coexistence remain largely unresolved. With regard to individual plant species, abiotic factors (environmental conditions), and a number of biotic factors such as intraspecific competition (Stoll & Prati, 2001), interspecific competition (Goldberg & Barton, 1992), a species’ associated soil community as well as the associated soil communities of other plant species (van de Voorde, van der Putten, & Bezemer, 2011) plays important roles for plant–plant interactions and for coexistence between them. Plant–soil feedback as a process potentially maintaining plant species coexistence when acting as a stabilizing mechanism (Chesson, 2000; HilleRisLambers, Adler, Harpole, Levine, & Mayfield, 2012) has received considerable attention (Bever, 2003; Bever, Platt, & Morton, 2012; Bever, Westover, & Antonovics, 1997; Ehrenfeld, Ravit, & Elgersma, 2005; Klironomos, 2002; Kulmatiski, Beard, Stevens, & Cobbold, 2008; van der Putten et al, 2013) This idea is based on the fact that a plant community influences its associated soil community, and the soil organisms have specific feedback effects on their host plants in turn (Bever et al, 1997). The strength of plant–soil feedback can be explained by morphological similarities between accessions/species or by individual traits
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