Soils as agents of selection: feedbacks between plants and soils alter seedling survival and performance

By Clara C. Pregitzer, J. Bailey, S. Hart, J. Schweitzer. Evolutionary Ecology, 2010

96 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soils are one of the first selective environments a seed experiences and yet little is known about the evolutionary consequences of plant-soil feedbacks. We have previously found that plant phytochemical traits in a model system, Populus spp., influence rates of leaf litter decay, soil microbial communities and rates of soil net nitrogen mineralization. Utilizing this natural variation in plant-soil linkages we examined two related hypotheses: (1) Populus angustifolia seedlings are locally adapted to their native soils; and (2) Soils act as agents of selection, differentially affecting seedling survival and the heritability of plant traits. We conducted a greenhouse experiment by planting seedlings from 20 randomly collected P. angustifolia genetic families in soils conditioned by various Populus species and measured subsequent survival and performance. Even though P. angustifolia soils are less fertile overall, P. angustifolia seedlings grown in these soils were twice as likely to survive, grew 24% taller, had 27% more leaves, and 29% greater above-ground biomass than P. angustifolia seedlings grown in non-native P. fremontii or hybrid soils. Increased survival resulted in higher trait variation among seedlings in native soils compared to seedlings grown in non-native soils. Soil microbial biomass varied significantly across soil environments which could explain more of the variation in seedling performance than soil texture, pH, or nutrient availability, suggesting strong microbial interactions and feedbacks between plants, soils, and associated microorganisms. Overall, these data suggest that a “home-field advantage” or a positive plant soil feedback helps maintain genetic variance in P. angustifolia seedlings.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1096bac80021298ecce62d6979154b23a984a1d4

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Citations in the corpus

Plant–soil feedbacks: connecting ecosystem ecology and evolution (2016, background): “…planted into soils that were conditioned by various Populus species, P. angustifolia seedlings grown in their own soils were twice as likely to survive and had the highest genetic variation in performance traits, even though P. angustifolia soils were less fertile overall (Pregitzer et al. 2010).”
Legacy Effects: The Persistent Impact of Ecological Interactions (2011, methodology): “Moreover, some authors have used legacy effects in the systems described here to study selection (Pregitzer et al. 2010).”
Genetic variation in productivity of foundation riparian species at the edge of their distribution: implications for restoration and assisted migration in a warming climate (2011, result): “Our results, however, apply only to the test conditions of the PVER site, as we did not include multiple common gardens that are required to fully evaluate genotype 9 environment interactions (e.g., Lojewski et al., 2009; Pregitzer et al., 2010).”
Plant–soil feedbacks: the past, the present and future challenges (2013, background): “Recent studies show the importance of within-species genetic variance on plant–soil feedbacks that is mediated by aspects of the soil biota (Pregitzer et al. 2010; Felker-Quinn, Bailey & Schweitzer 2011; Lankau et al. 2011).”