Invasive belowground mutualists of woody plants

By Martin A. Nuñez, Ian A. DICKIE. Biological Invasions, 2014

172 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Most plants require mutualistic associations to survive, which can be an important limitation on their ability to become invasive. There are four strategies that permit plants to become invasive without being limited by a lack of mutualists. One is to not be dependent on mutualists. The other three strategies are to form novel mutualisms, form associations with cosmopolitan species, or co-invade with mutualists from their native range. Historically there has been a bias to study mutualisms from a plant perspective, with little consideration of soil biota as invasive species in their own right. Here we address this by reviewing the literature on belowground invasive mutualists of woody plants. We focus on woody invaders as ecosystem-transforming plants that frequently have a high dependence on belowground mutualists. We found that co-invasions are common, with many ectomycorrhizal plant species and N-fixing species co-invading with their mutualists. Other groups, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal plants, tend to associate with cosmopolitan fungal species or to form novel associations in their exotic range. Only limited evidence exists of direct negative effects of co-invading mutualists on native mutualist communities, and effects on native plants appear to be largely driven by altered environmental conditions rather than direct interactions. Mutualists that introduce novel ecosystem functions have effects greater than would be predicted based solely on their biomass. Focusing on the belowground aspects of plant invasions provides novel insights into the impacts, processes and management of invasions of both soil organisms and woody plant species.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b96b05543ee3278a18248f4d88443236670d2a70

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Ecology and management of invasive Pinaceae around the world: progress and challenges (2017, background): “Nuñez and Dickie (2014) proposed the possibility of identifying and inoculating EMF species that are both useful in forestry and have a low invasion risk, as a way of improving the environmental sustainability of plantation forestry with non-native tree species such as pines.”
Impacts of invasive biota in forest ecosystems in an aboveground–belowground context (2017, background): “As such, invasive plants often not only escape soil pathogens that may keep them in check in their native range, but can also enter novel mutualistic relationships with soil biota in their new range (Reinhart and Callaway 2006; Nuñez and Dickie 2014).”