Effects of soil conditioning, root and shoot litter addition interact to determine the intensity of plant-soil feedback (dataset)

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) is recognized as an important mechanism shaping plant communities and determining plant abundance and coexistence. Under natural conditions, plants affect the outcome of plant-soil interactions simultaneously by conditioning the soil by living roots and by litter inputs into the soil. However, most experimental studies only focus on one of the pathways, which limits our understanding of PSF in the field. Here, we simultaneously explored the effect of soil conditioning by living roots and of root and shoot litter addition on the performance of seven Impatiens species grown in a two-phase garden experiment. Soil conditioning negatively affected plant performance and the effect was at least partly explained by nutrient depletion. Root litter addition affected plant performance negatively and the results suggest that biotic effects such as pathogen transmission via the root litter played a role. The effects of root litter addition were more pronounced in control ...