PSF-2-PREDICT · Predicting when plant-soil feedbacks promote or prevent alien plant invasion.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-03-27 → 2022-10-27
- EU contribution
- €175,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Predicting when plant-soil feedbacks promote or prevent alien plant invasion.
Predicting which alien species will become invasive is key to mitigating their impact. It has been suggested that plant-soil feedbacks (PSF) between invasive plant species and soil microbial communities in the invaded range is one factor that can determine whether an alien plant species becomes invasive. Positive PSF (the alien plant species experiences enhanced performance due to soil microbial communities in the invaded range) could promote alien plant invasion but negative PSF (the alien plant species experienced reduced performance due to soil microbial communities in the invaded range) could help their control. However, a framework to predict which alien species will experience positive PSF, and under what conditions, is lacking. Such a framework is needed to provide a foundation for applied research on the impact of plant invasions on native plant communities, and how PSF knowledge might be used in ecosystem restoration worldwide (targeting EU Regulation 1143/2014 on Invasive Alien Species and Goal 15 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals). I hypothesized that close relatedness of invasive with native plant species would be one factor that could help predict the outcome of PSF for invasions, but that whether these outcomes promoted or prevented invasion would depend on local context. Focusing on variation in nutrient availability (as context), I aimed to address three key research objectives: 1) quantify the strength of PSF under differing nutrient conditions; 2) characterise mutualistic associations in the roots; and 3) characterise the soil microbial communities they cultivate. Due to COVID-19 and subsequent offer of a permanent position, the duration of the project was only 4 months and work was entirely desk-based. Consequently, I sought to examine the major themes of the project from a theoretical perspective and/or using existing data. Specifically, I aimed to: 1) Identify whether knowledge of species relatedness could help predict the outcome of PSF; 2) Explore other factors that influence the degree to which PSF outcomes could be predicted; 3) Examine the role of local context in influencing the outcome of PSF. This work is still ongoing and conclusions so far are that: 1) Knowledge of species relatedness can only predict the outcome of PSF when species are either closely related or belong to key plant taxa known to show strong responses to soil mutualists. 2) PSF outcomes are highly variable within and among studies, and it remains unclear what drives this very high variability.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Predicting which alien plant species will become invasive is key to mitigating their impact. Plant-soil feedbacks (PSF) between plant species and soil microbes are crucial for controlling plant abundance. It has been suggested that positive PSF could promote alien plant invasion but that negative PSF could help their control. However, a framework to predict which alien species will experience positive feedback, and under what conditions, is lacking. My project will combine fundamental ecological theory, state-of-the-art knowledge of PSF, carefully designed experiments, and cutting-edge techniques in data analysis and high-throughput sequencing to gain a predictive understanding of the role of PSF in plant invasion. I will test the novel hypothesis that close relatedness between alien and native plant species will promote invasion when nutrients are limiting by allowing alien plants to integrate into native soil mutualistic networks, but prevent invasion under high nutrient conditions by increasing the susceptibility of alien plants to native soil pathogens. For alien and native plant species that vary in relatedness I will: 1) quantify the strength of PSF under differing nutrient conditions; 2) characterise mutualistic associations in the roots; and 3) characterise the soil microbial communities they cultivate. Moreover, I will develop an open access database of collated PSF data to facilitate further global collaborations. Results will reveal how native plant communities and their local environment influence alien plant invasions. They will lay the foundation for important applied research on the impact of plant invasions on native PSF, and how PSF knowledge might be used in ecosystem restoration worldwide. By targeting EU Regulation 1143/2014 on Invasive Alien Species and Goal 15 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this research will contribute to applied outcomes for the EU and substantially raise my research profile within Europe and internationally.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE AKADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN - KNAW · AMSTERDAMCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union