Authors: Xinmin Lu Evan Siemann Hui Wei Xu Shao Jianqing Ding
Publish Date: 2015/06/07
Volume: 17, Issue: 10, Pages: 2881-2892
Abstract
Warming and atmospheric nitrogen deposition could impact plant community composition by altering competitive interactions however the effects of these environmental changes on plant invasions via above and belowground herbivory are unknown Here we report the effects of warming and nitrogen addition on aboveground insect defoliation and belowground rootknot nematode infection of a native plant and an introduced invasive congener Warming increased belowground nematode infection only while nitrogen addition increased both nematodes and defoliation Defoliation rates were similar for the exotic invasive and native species and the increases with nitrogen addition were large almost doubled but comparable However roots of native plant were more intensively infected ie knot density than roots of the exotic invasive plant ~4fold in ambient conditions and this difference increased under elevated temperature ~30fold higher in which total nematode infection were nearly tenfold higher Compared to the exotic invasive plant the native plant had a higher proportion of fine roots and specific leaf area but lower photosynthesis ability irrespective of warming and nitrogen deposition treatments The nematode preferred fine roots to coarse roots for both plant species Our study indicates that above and belowground herbivory of plants differ in their sensitivity to varying drivers of environmental change which may alter plant interactions and makes it difficult to predict future community structure Together with the dramatic response of belowground nematodes to warming this suggests that future modeling or experimental studies on species’ responses to environmental change should simultaneously consider above and belowground communitiesWe thank Fang Chen Minyan He Mingxun Ren Jialiang Zhang and Sunliang Feng for assistance and Richard Mack for comments and edits This work was supported by NSFChina 31100302 31370547 the knowledge innovation program of Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS KSCX2YWZ1019 and Wuhan Botanical Garden Y455437H05 a CAS Foreign Professorship O929361H02 and USNSF DEB 0820560
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