Does European-introduced Phragmites australis experience below-ground microbial enemy release in North America?

Escape from native range enemies can give invasive species a competitive edge according to the enemy-release hypothesis. While more commonly associated with predators and herbivores, release from belowground microbial antagonists has been recently demonstrated to benefit invasive plants. Biogeographic variation in dominance and comparisons of soil communities suggest that invasive European Phragmites australis may have also benefitted from belowground enemy release in North America. Here we examine the effects of native range (Europe) versus introduced range (North America) soil communities on European native and North American introduced P. australis using a reciprocal inoculation seedling growth experiment. Contrary to the enemy-release hypothesis, we found that North American-introduced P. australis was sensitive to soil community origin in that the seedlings grown in European soil communities (native) had higher total biomass than seedlings grown in North American soil communities (..., Field sampling
North American and European Phragmites seed and soil were collected from three different habitats, tidal brackish wetland, freshwater marsh, and inundated urban areas. All plant material was confirmed to be haplotype “M” using visual identification methods (Swearigan & Saltonstall 2010). This stratification allowed us to detect the effects of range-level differences in soil community across our different response variables and account for environmental filtering through sampling. North American sites were located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, the urban (NA-U) and freshwater (NA-F) sites were located around the greater Philadelphia, PA (USA) area, while the tidal site (NA-T) was located 150 km south on the eastern shore of Maryland along King’s Creek, MD (USA) (Table 1). This site is a well-studied and extensively sampled site previously used in a multitude of Phragmites studies and ranges in salinity between 0.1-8 ppt (Meadows & Saltonstall 20..., , # Does European-introduced *Phragmites australis* experience below-ground microbial enemy release in North America?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79rn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79rn)

This repository contains all the datasets and R code needed to analyze the study, \"Does European introduced *Phragmites australis* experience below-ground microbial enemy-release in North America?\". Datasets are presented in .csv format and titles will correspond to the analysis performed. The detailed annotated code used to analyze each of the datasets is included in the Ecosphere Models.R file. The code used to reproduce the figures found in the study is also included in the Ecosphere Figures 2.R file. 

For any additional information please contact the corresponding author Sean Lee at ([[e-mail])](mailto:slee38@tulane.e)

## Description of the data and file structure

### *Biomass analysis*

We explored the effects of soil inocula on *Phragmites* seedling biomass sourced from d...