Differential stoichiometric homeostasis and growth in two native and two invasive C 3 grasses
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PHYSIOLOGICAL ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Differential stoichiometric homeostasis and growth in two native and two invasive C3 grasses Joshua T. Harvey1,2 · A. Joshua Leffler1 Received: 8 January 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Global changes interact with plant invasions by differentially impacting native and invasive species. For example, invasive plants often benefit from eutrophication to a greater degree than native plants. While this is well-documented, a broad, traitbased explanation for this phenomenon is lacking. Recent research shows that stoichiometric homeostasis predicts plant species responses to eutrophication and drought, but this research has not been extended into an invasion ecology paradigm. We tested the hypotheses that stoichiometric homeostasis would differ between native and invasive plants, that expressed levels of stoichiometric homeostasis would respond to water availability, and that differences in stoichiometric homeostasis would match differences in growth. In a nutrient and water manipulation study, we found that stoichiometric homeostasis differed between native grasses (Elymus canadensis and Pascopyrum smithii) and invasive grasses (Agropyron cristatum and Bromus inermis), that differences in stoichiometric homeostasis matched differences in growth in well-watered grasses, and that expressed levels of stoichiometric homeostasis were stable across the water supply treatments. These results suggest that invasive plants maintain growth advantages over native plants in eutrophic conditions because of differential homeostatic requirements. We argue that stoichiometric homeostasis is therefore a useful functional trait to explain and predict differential native and invasive plant responses to global change. Keywords Stoichiometric homeostasis · Invasion · Eutrophication · Drought · Invasive grasses
Introduction Plant invasions are frequently concomitant with other environmental forcings such as disturbance or eutrophication. These other drivers of change can further promote invasion by differentially impacting the performance of native and invasive plants (Jia et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2017; Sorte et al. 2013). For example, invasive plants tend to respond more positively to N deposition than native species (Bradley et al. Communicated by Fernando Valladares. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04734-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Joshua T. Harvey [email protected] 1
Department of Natural Resource Management, South Dakota State University, Brookings, USA
Present Address: AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University, Uvalde, USA
2
2010; González et al. 2010; Jia et al. 2016). Identifying mechanistic explanations for differing native and invasive plant responses to environmental change will be critical for predicting invasions and developing sound management strategies (Bradley et al.
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