Achieving Bio-Protection in New Zealand Ecosystems mesocosm data

We established 160 experimental ecosystems (mesocosms), manipulated interactions between plants, soil biota and invertebrate herbivores in a fully factorial design. Each mesocosm was grown in a 125 L pot (575 mm diameter, Fig. 1B), and comprised one of 20 unique, eight-species plant communities varying orthogonally in the proportion of exotic and woody shrub/tree species (0-100% and 0-63%, respectively). These plants were taken from a pool of 20 exotic and 19 native/endemic New Zealand plant species. Soil biota were manipulated using a modified plant-soil feedback approach, where each plant species was grown in monoculture in 10 L pots containing field-collected soil for 9-10 months, allowing the conditioning of typical associated soil biota for each of the plant species. We created ‘home’ soils by taking the conditioned soil from each of the eight representative species in a mesocosm and mixing it together to create a single inoculum. Each ‘home’ soil mixture was also used as an ‘away ...