OOS 18
Plant-Soil Feedbacks and Plant Coexistence: Integrating Theoretical Models and Empirical Approaches

Tuesday, August 11, 2015: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
327, Baltimore Convention Center
Organizer:
Y. Anny Chung, University of New Mexico
Co-organizer:
Jean H. Burns, Case Western Reserve University
Moderator:
Stephanie N. Kivlin, University of Texas
Feedback between plants and soils are increasingly recognized as a key component of plant community assembly and diversity. Plant-soil feedbacks are often strongly negative, which could enhance coexistence between plant species and thus increase diversity. Across ecosystems, feedback can vary between plant functional groups and with abiotic conditions, such as soil nutrients and climate. At the local scale, feedback strengths are often correlated with natural relative abundances of co-occurring plant species in a community. While recent work suggests that plant-soil feedback could be a strong driver in plant species coexistence, a mechanistic understanding of this process across taxonomic and spatial scales is lacking. Evaluating the relative importance of plant-soil feedback compared to other community drivers in facilitating plant community coexistence and diversity is now one of the new frontiers of ecological research, largely aided by the rapid development of molecular tools to study microbial communities. However, the generality of the magnitude and drivers of plant-soil feedback across ecosystems is unknown. As with any emerging field, there is a diversity of empirical approaches and wide-ranging theoretical extensions that could benefit from integration. This session aims to bring together early-career and established scientists in the area to exchange cutting-edge results, spark new dialogue, and facilitate effective experimental design to test theory, as well as evidence-informed development of new theoretical directions. This session is organized to present perspectives linking a variety of mechanisms through which plant-soil feedbacks mediate plant species coexistence and community diversity. These perspectives first investigate basic coexistence criteria such as mutual invasibility and intra/interspecific competition and explore mechanisms driving these patterns. The session then extends this perspective to implications for above-belowground interactions, within and between species variation, and exotic plant invasions. Finally, the influence of climate on plant soil feedback is addressed. Overall, this session will link cutting edge empirical and theoretical research on both the biotic and abiotic drivers of plant-soil feedback with plant coexistence across ecosystems.
8:20 AM
 Potential drivers of mutual invasibility in Rumex congeners
Jean H. Burns, Case Western Reserve University; Angela J. Brandt, Landcare Research; Jennifer E. Murphy, Case Western Reserve University; Angela Kaczowka, University of Arizona; David J. Burke, The Holden Arboretum
8:40 AM
 Plant-soil feedbacks and long-term coexistence dynamics in the field
Y. Anny Chung, University of New Mexico; Jennifer A. Rudgers, University of New Mexico
9:20 AM
 Enemy-mediated negative feedbacks trump competitive interactions as stabilizing forces that maintain the diversity of prairie ecosystems
Scott A. Mangan, Washington University in St. Louis; Claudia Stein, Washington University in St. Louis
9:40 AM
9:50 AM
 Is coexistence between invasive Microstegium vimineum and native plants dependent on invasion history of the soil?
Chelsea E. Cunard, University of Georgia; Richard A. Lankau, University of Wisconsin
10:10 AM
 Context-dependence of plant-soil feedback: Environment matters
Lauren M. Smith, National Institute for Mathematical Biology; Heather L. Reynolds, Indiana University
10:30 AM
 Patch level plant-soil feedback heterogeneity: A matter of scale?
E.R. Jasper Wubs, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW); T. Martijn Bezemer, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW)
10:50 AM
 Interactive effects of plant and soil community history on ecosystem temporal stability
Sofia J. van Moorsel, University of Zurich; Terhi Hahl, University of Zurich; Dan F.B. Flynn, University of Zurich; Varuna Yadav, University of Zurich; Bernhard Schmid, University of Zurich