Legacy effects of drought on plant–soil feedbacks and plant–plant interactions
TL;DR: It is shown that drought has lasting effects on belowground communities with consequences for plant-soil feedbacks and plant-plant interactions, and suggests that drought, which is predicted to increase in frequency with climate change, may change soil functioning and plant community composition via the modification of plant- soil Feedbacks.
Abstract: Interactions between aboveground and belowground biota have the potential to modify ecosystem responses to climate change, yet little is known about how drought influences plant-soil feedbacks with respect to microbial mediation of plant community dynamics We tested the hypothesis that drought modifies plant-soil feedback with consequences for plant competition We measured net pairwise plant-soil feedbacks for two grassland plant species grown in monoculture and competition in soils that had or had not been subjected to a previous drought; these were then exposed to a subsequent drought To investigate the mechanisms involved, we assessed treatment responses of soil microbial communities and nutrient availability We found that previous drought had a legacy effect on bacterial and fungal community composition that decreased plant growth in conspecific soils and had knock-on effects for plant competitive interactions Moreover, plant and microbial responses to subsequent drought were dependent on a legacy effect of the previous drought on plant-soil interactions We show that drought has lasting effects on belowground communities with consequences for plant-soil feedbacks and plant-plant interactions This suggests that drought, which is predicted to increase in frequency with climate change, may change soil functioning and plant community composition via the modification of plant-soil feedbacks
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01 Dec 2010
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest a reduction in the global NPP of 0.55 petagrams of carbon, which would not only weaken the terrestrial carbon sink, but would also intensify future competition between food demand and biofuel production.
Abstract: Terrestrial net primary production (NPP) quantifies the amount of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants and accumulated as biomass. Previous studies have shown that climate constraints were relaxing with increasing temperature and solar radiation, allowing an upward trend in NPP from 1982 through 1999. The past decade (2000 to 2009) has been the warmest since instrumental measurements began, which could imply continued increases in NPP; however, our estimates suggest a reduction in the global NPP of 0.55 petagrams of carbon. Large-scale droughts have reduced regional NPP, and a drying trend in the Southern Hemisphere has decreased NPP in that area, counteracting the increased NPP over the Northern Hemisphere. A continued decline in NPP would not only weaken the terrestrial carbon sink, but it would also intensify future competition between food demand and proposed biofuel production.
1,780 citations
TL;DR: It is shown in grassland mesocosms that drought promotes destabilising properties in soil bacterial, but not fungal, co-occurrence networks, and that changes in bacterial communities link more strongly to soil functioning during recovery than do changes in fungal communities.
Abstract: Soil microbial communities play a crucial role in ecosystem functioning, but it is unknown how co-occurrence networks within these communities respond to disturbances such as climate extremes This represents an important knowledge gap because changes in microbial networks could have implications for their functioning and vulnerability to future disturbances Here, we show in grassland mesocosms that drought promotes destabilising properties in soil bacterial, but not fungal, co-occurrence networks, and that changes in bacterial communities link more strongly to soil functioning during recovery than do changes in fungal communities Moreover, we reveal that drought has a prolonged effect on bacterial communities and their co-occurrence networks via changes in vegetation composition and resultant reductions in soil moisture Our results provide new insight in the mechanisms through which drought alters soil microbial communities with potential long-term consequences, including future plant community composition and the ability of aboveground and belowground communities to withstand future disturbances
804 citations
TL;DR: This work makes a number of predictions concerning climate change effects on PSFs and consequences for vegetation-soil-climate feedbacks while acknowledging that they may be context-dependent, spatially heterogeneous, and temporally variable.
Abstract: Plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are interactions among plants, soil organisms, and abiotic soil conditions that influence plant performance, plant species diversity, and community structure, ultimately driving ecosystem processes. We review how climate change will alter PSFs and their potential consequences for ecosystem functioning. Climate change influences PSFs through the performance of interacting species and altered community composition resulting from changes in species distributions. Climate change thus affects plant inputs into the soil subsystem via litter and rhizodeposits and alters the composition of the living plant roots with which mutualistic symbionts, decomposers, and their natural enemies interact. Many of these plant-soil interactions are species-specific and are greatly affected by temperature, moisture, and other climate-related factors. We make a number of predictions concerning climate change effects on PSFs and consequences for vegetation-soil-climate feedbacks while acknowledging that they may be context-dependent, spatially heterogeneous, and temporally variable.
206 citations
Spanish National Research Council1, University of Coimbra2, Aix-Marseille University3, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research4, ETH Zurich5, Wageningen University and Research Centre6, University of Ulm7, Royal Museum for Central Africa8, Vrije Universiteit Brussel9, University of Helsinki10, National University of Río Negro11, University of Ljubljana12, Center for International Forestry Research13, Dresden University of Technology14, United States Forest Service15, Transilvania University of Brașov16, Humboldt State University17, Sukachev Institute of Forest18, Siberian Federal University19, National University of Comahue20, National Scientific and Technical Research Council21, Weizmann Institute of Science22, Pablo de Olavide University23, University of Innsbruck24, Agricultural University of Athens25, University of Valladolid26, University of Novi Sad27, Autonomous University of Barcelona28
TL;DR: It is found that trees that died during drought were less resilient to previous dry events compared to surviving conspecifics, but the resilience strategies differ between angiosperms and gymnosperms.
Abstract: Severe droughts have the potential to reduce forest productivity and trigger tree mortality. Most trees face several drought events during their life and therefore resilience to dry conditions may be crucial to long-term survival. We assessed how growth resilience to severe droughts, including its components resistance and recovery, is related to the ability to survive future droughts by using a tree-ring database of surviving and now-dead trees from 118 sites (22 species, >3,500 trees). We found that, across the variety of regions and species sampled, trees that died during water shortages were less resilient to previous non-lethal droughts, relative to coexisting surviving trees of the same species. In angiosperms, drought-related mortality risk is associated with lower resistance (low capacity to reduce impact of the initial drought), while it is related to reduced recovery (low capacity to attain pre-drought growth rates) in gymnosperms. The different resilience strategies in these two taxonomic groups open new avenues to improve our understanding and prediction of drought-induced mortality.
197 citations
TL;DR: Understanding the mechanisms of plant-soil feedback and their role within plant communities requires quantification of the interactions among the processes influencing PSF and the associated abiotic and biotic contexts.
Abstract: Contents Summary 91 I. Introduction 91 II. Primary PSF mechanisms 91 III. Factors mediating the mechanisms of PSF 93 IV. Conclusions and future directions 94 Acknowledgements 95 Author contributions 95 References 95 SUMMARY: Plant-soil feedback (PSF) occurs when plants alter soil properties that influence the performance of seedlings, with consequent effects on plant populations and communities. Many processes influence PSF, including changes in nutrient availability and the accumulation of natural enemies, mutualists or secondary chemicals. Typically, these mechanisms are investigated in isolation, yet no single mechanism is likely to be completely responsible for PSF as these processes can interact. Further, the outcome depends on which resources are limiting and the other plants and soil biota in the surrounding environment. As such, understanding the mechanisms of PSF and their role within plant communities requires quantification of the interactions among the processes influencing PSF and the associated abiotic and biotic contexts.
193 citations
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TL;DR: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing; permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Abstract: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the R Core Team.
272,030 citations
TL;DR: Competition was found in 90% of the studies and 76% of their species, indicating its pervasive importance in ecological systems, and the Hairston-Slobodkin-Smith hypothesis concerning variation in the importance of competition between trophic levels was strongly supported.
Abstract: The study of interspecific competition has long been one of ecology's most fashionable pursuits. Stimulated in part by a simple theory (Lotka 1932; Volterra 1926; Gause 1934; Hutchinson 1959; MacArthur and Levins 1967), ecologists gathered numerous data on the apparent ways species competitively coexist or exclude one another (reviews in Schoener 1974b, 1983). As is typical in science, most of the early data were observational, and the few experimental studies were mostly performed in the laboratory rather than in the field. Though never lacking its doubters, the belief in the natural importance of interspecific competition is now being severely questioned (review in Schoener 1982). Many of the putatively supportive observations have been challenged as being statistically indistinguishable from random contrivance. Most such attacks have been rebutted, but not without some modification of original conclusions (e.g., papers in Strong et al. 1983). New observations have been gathered for certain systems, suggesting a lack of competitively caused patterns and catalyzing the variable environment view of Wiens (1977) in which competition is seen as a temporally sporadic, often impotent, interaction. Other critics have charged that the lack of experimental field evidence for competition would preclude its acceptance regardless of the quality of observational data. Indeed, results of some of the earlier field experiments are in part responsible for competition's presently beleaguered state. Connell (1975), after reviewing the field experiments known to him through 1973, concluded that predation, rather than competition, appears to be the predominant ecological interaction and should be given "conceptual priority." Shortly afterward, Schroder and Rosenzweig (1975) showed experimentally that two species of desert rodents overlapping substantially in habitat did not appear to affect one another's abundances. This result was interpreted as contradicting a crucial assumption of competition theory, almost its linchpin: the greater the resource overlap between species, the greater the competition coefficient, a measure of the intensity of interspecific competition (relative to intraspecific competition; MacArthur and Levins 1967; review in Roughgarden 1979).
2,256 citations
TL;DR: Interaction of VeA with at least four methyltransferase proteins indicates a molecular hub function for VeA that questions: Is there a VeA supercomplex or is VeA part of a highly dynamic cellular control network with many different partners?
Abstract: Fungal secondary metabolism has become an important research topic with great biomedical and biotechnological value. In the postgenomic era, understanding the diversity and the molecular control of secondary metabolites are two challenging tasks addressed by the research community. Discovery of the LaeA methyltransferase 10 years ago opened up a new horizon on the control of secondary metabolite research when it was found that expression of many secondary metabolite gene clusters is controlled by LaeA. While the molecular function of LaeA remains an enigma, discovery of the velvet family proteins as interaction partners further extended the role of the LaeA beyond secondary metabolism. The heterotrimeric VelB-VeA-LaeA complex plays important roles in development, sporulation, secondary metabolism and pathogenicity. Recently, three other methyltransferases have been found to associate with the velvet complex, the LaeA-like methyltransferase F (LlmF) and the methyltransferase heterodimers VipC-VapB. Interaction of VeA with at least four methyltransferase proteins indicates a molecular hub function for VeA that questions: Is there a VeA supercomplex or is VeA part of a highly dynamic cellular control network with many different partners?
2,234 citations
TL;DR: Satellite data used to estimate global terrestrial NPP over the past decade found that the earlier trend has been reversed and that NPP has been decreasing, and combined with climate change data suggests that large-scale droughts are responsible for the decline.
Abstract: Terrestrial net primary production (NPP) quantifies the amount of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants and accumulated as biomass. Previous studies have shown that climate constraints were relaxing with increasing temperature and solar radiation, allowing an upward trend in NPP from 1982 through 1999. The past decade (2000 to 2009) has been the warmest since instrumental measurements began, which could imply continued increases in NPP; however, our estimates suggest a reduction in the global NPP of 0.55 petagrams of carbon. Large-scale droughts have reduced regional NPP, and a drying trend in the Southern Hemisphere has decreased NPP in that area, counteracting the increased NPP over the Northern Hemisphere. A continued decline in NPP would not only weaken the terrestrial carbon sink, but it would also intensify future competition between food demand and proposed biofuel production.
2,027 citations
"Legacy effects of drought on plant–..." refers background in this paper
...There is currently much debate about the potential consequences of ongoing climate change for both the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems (Zhao & Running, 2010; Reichstein et al., 2013)....
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