An invasive plant rapidly increased the similarity of soil fungal pathogen communities

Background and Aims: Plant invasions can change soil microbial communities and affect subsequent invasions directly or indirectly via foliar herbivory. It has been proposed that invaders promote uniform biotic communities that displace diverse, spatially variable communities (“Biotic Homogenization Hypothesis”) but this has not been experimentally tested for soil microbial communities, so the underlying mechanisms and dynamics are unclear. Here, we compared density-dependent impacts of the invasive plant Alternanthera philoxeroides and its native congener A.sessilis on soil fungal communities, and their feedback effects on plants and a foliar beetle.

Methods: We conducted a plant-soil feedback (PSF) experiment and a lab bioassay to examine PSFs associated with the native and invasive plants and a beetle feeding on them. We also characterized the soil fungal community using high-throughput sequencing.

Key Results: We found locally differentiated soil fungal pathogen assemblages associa..., , ,