No evidence that plant-soil feedback effects of native and invasive plant species under greenhouse conditions are reflected in the field

Plant–soil feedback (PSF) may affect above-ground higher trophic levels in glasshouse experiments, but evidence from field studies on the relevance of these multitrophic interactions for plant performance is lacking. Therefore, we examined whether PSF effects of several native and invasive plant species occur also in the field and influence plant damage by above-ground herbivores. Root zone soil from an abandoned urban field was used as inocula for the PSF experiment. First, we grew eight urban grassland plant species (five natives and three invasive species) separately in a glasshouse, with soil biota communities conditioned by the respective species itself (‘home soil’) or by a mixture of all other species (‘foreign soil’). After 13 weeks, one cohort of the plants was placed on an urban field in Berlin to assess damage by naturally colonizing herbivores, while another cohort of the plants stayed in the glasshouse. We observed that the extent of the PSF effects differed between the fie...