Root Responses To Neighbors Depend On Neighbor Identity And Resource Distribution
2021
In a complex soil environment, competitive and environmental factors interact with individual traits to influence a plant’s root growth patterns and ability to compete for resources. Here, we examine how root growth of a focal plant, Plantago lanceolata L., responds to resource heterogeneity and to presence of two neighbor species, Centaurea jacea L.and Poa pratensis L. A full factorial experiment tested the effects of nutrient heterogeneity, neighbors, and their interaction on root responses of Plantago. Roots in shared quadrants of a pot were harvested and quantified by qPCR for plants grown alone or with a neighbor, in patchy or even soil. The effects of experimental treatments on Plantago root mass distribution were tested with two-way ANOVA. When soil resources were evenly distributed, Plantago individuals increased root allocation to soil shared with a Centaurea neighbor but not a Poa neighbor. When soil resources were patchy, Plantago responded more strongly to Poa than to Centaurea, and placed more roots in the high-resource patch. These results demonstrate that plants can respond differently to neighbors depending on species and that integrating multiple cues results in non-additive effects on root behavior.
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
53
References
1
Citations
NaN
KQI