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Invasive clonal plant species have a greater root-foraging plasticity than non-invasive ones

  • Global change ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Clonality is frequently positively correlated with plant invasiveness, but which aspects of clonality make some clonal species more invasive than others is not known. Due to their spreading growth form, clonal plants are likely to experience spatial heterogeneity in nutrient availability. Plasticity in allocation of biomass to clonal growth organs and roots may allow these plants to forage for high-nutrient patches. We investigated whether this foraging response is stronger in species that have become invasive than in species that have not. We used six confamilial pairs of native European clonal plant species differing in invasion success in the USA. We grew all species in large pots under homogeneous or heterogeneous nutrient conditions in a greenhouse, and compared their nutrient-foraging response and performance. Neither invasive nor non-invasive species showed significant foraging responses to heterogeneity in clonal growth organ biomass or in aboveground biomass of clonal offspring. Invasive species had, however, a greater positive foraging response in terms of root and belowground biomass than non-invasive species. Invasive species also produced more total biomass. Our results suggest that the ability for strong root foraging is among the characteristics promoting invasiveness in clonal plants.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Andreas Ensslin, Anne Kempel, Arend-Jan Baakman, Babette Keser, Sebastian Keller, Bernadette van den Eeden, Christine Heiniger, Christophe Bornand, Corina Del Fabbro, Eelke Jongejans, Gemma Rutten, Hanneke van Lierop, Laura Keser, Madalin Parepa, Marc Vis, Martina Bisculm, Oana Burlacu, Peter Ellenberger, Pius Winniger, Roos Teijken, Sylvia Zingg, Thomas Chrobock, Vitek Latzel, Wim Jongejans, Yuan-Ye Zhang, Yvonne Zuercher and Zhengwen Wang for their practical help at various stages of the experiment. This project was funded by the Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation (project no. IZLCZ3 123973).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, 3013, Bern, Switzerland

    Lidewij H. Keser & Markus Fischer

  2. Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstraße 10, 78457, Constance, Germany

    Lidewij H. Keser, Wayne Dawson & Mark van Kleunen

  3. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Yao-Bin Song & Ming Dong

  4. School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Fei-Hai Yu

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  1. Lidewij H. Keser
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Correspondence to Lidewij H. Keser.

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Communicated by Russell Monson.

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Keser, L.H., Dawson, W., Song, YB. et al. Invasive clonal plant species have a greater root-foraging plasticity than non-invasive ones. Oecologia 174, 1055–1064 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-013-2829-y

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