Microbial Communities of a Field Plant-Soil Feedback Experiment

Despite the importance of plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) in plant growth and community composition patterns, PSF research is largely performed in short-term greenhouse experiments. We developed a long-term, common garden field experiment to determine the PSF values of six native and six non-native plants of the intermountain west. PSFs improved our ability to predict plant cover and plant biomass in communities. However, the mechanisms behind PSFs are largely unknown. Microbial interactions with plants are a likely driver of plant-soil feedbacks, but their role in PSFs is poorly understood. We performed pyrosequencing of microbial communities under 65 plant-soil feedback plots. Although mechanisms driving PSFs was not determined, microbial communities under different plant species were found to be distinct.