Plantesoil feedbacks are important to productivity and plant community dynamics in both natural and managed ecosystems. Among soil bacteria, the Streptomyces possess particularly strong antagonistic activities and inhibit diverse plant pathogens, offering a clear pathway to involvement in plantesoil feedbacks. We hypothesized that feedback effects and the ability of individual host plant specie...

Plant-soil feedback is receiving increasing interest as a factor influencing plant competition and species coexistence in grasslands. However, we do not know how spatial distribution of plant-soil feedback affects plant below-ground interactions. We investigated the way in which spatial heterogeneity of soil biota affects competitive interactions in grassland plant species. We performed a pairw...

BACKGROUND Over the past two decades many studies have demonstrated that plant species diversity promotes primary productivity and stability in grassland ecosystems. Additionally, soil community characteristics have also been shown to influence the productivity and composition of plant communities, yet little is known about whether soil communities also play a role in stabilizing the productivi...

When sprayed on plant leaves, several compounds, notably phenylmercuric acetate (PMA), can induce stomatal closure (16, 17). Most of these investigations with PMA were carried out on detached leaves with petioles dipping in water; it was found that the stomatal closing markedly reduced transpiration, whereas photosynthesis was reduced to a lesser extent. In these experiments it was demonstrated...

Coexisting plant species usually differ in resource requirements, which may a150 vary within species at successive demographic stages. Such differences become extremely important during the early life stages, since these are the most critical phases in woody-species recruitment, they depend heavily on resources, and they may determine future community composition. Under a global-change scenario...

Intraspecific negative feedback effects, where performance is reduced on soils conditioned by conspecifics, are widely documented in plant communities. However, interspecific feedbacks are less well studied, and their direction, strength, causes, and consequences are poorly understood. If more closely related species share pathogens, or have similar soil resource requirements, plants may perfor...

The pocosins, or broad-leaved evergreen shrub bogs, constitute one of the most distinctive plant communities of the southeastern coastal plain. They occupy flat, poorly-drained areas where the soil is frequently water-logged for long periods of time, but where surface water seldom stands to a depth of more than a few inches, and then only for comparatively short periods. The water relations of ...

• Soil hydrologic parameters including field saturation, field capacity, initiation of plant water stress and plant extraction limits can be reliably determined from electronic soil moisture sensor records. • Soil profile wetting and drying occurs along a regular continuum of soil moisture following the advance of the wetting from to the effective base of the soil profile. • Frozen soil conditi...

This study was undertaken with the aim of illuminating the soil-plant interactions of Pistacia lentiscus L., which is a Mediterranean sclerophylleous coastal zone plant in the Western Anatolian part of Turkey. The soil analysis data showed that this plant grows on different kinds of soils such as sandy-clayey-loam, clayey-loam, sandy-loam and loamy texture. Soils are not saline, with pH moderat...

In arid regions, water resources are a key forcing factor in ecosystem circulation, and soil moisture is the critical link that constrains plant and animal life on the soil surface and underground. Simulation of soil moisture in arid ecosystems is inherently difficult due to high variability. We assessed the applicability of the process-oriented CoupModel for forecasting of soil water relations...