In restoration ecology it is important to understand the processes that promote abundance in plant communities. Two of these processes are plant functional traits and plant-soil feedback. Plant traits have been proven useful in predicting abundance across many ecosystems due to their reflection of varying resource allocation in different environments. Plant-soil feedback estimates emerge through the influence of plants and soil microorganisms on one another’s fitness. Because these estimates are produced through the interaction between the plants and the site-specific microbial community, plant-soil feedback may be able to capture site-specific information influencing abundance that plant traits cannot. We hypothesized that plant-soil feedback and plant traits can be used to predict abundance. We conducted a two phase greenhouse experiment to calculate average feedback across 19 plant species from a restored prairie at the Ecological Research Center. Additionally, several plant traits were collected that are reflective of the plant economic spectrum. We found plant-soil feedback to be negative on average which is predicted to promote coexistence of plant species; however, plant-soil feedback is a weak predictor of abundance. This finding contradicts previous studies that did find plant-soil feedback to have strong predictive abilities and emphasizes the need for experimentation to identify the conditions under which plant-soil feedback is able to predict abundance. In contrast, three plant traits were identified as good predictors of abundance. At our site, abundant plant species had resource-conservative traits suggesting that interspecific competition driven by resource use is the dominant predictor of abundance over intraspecific competition driven by plant-soil feedback. My research experience as an undergraduate summer scholar working with Dr. Jonathan Bauer has provided me with the research experience necessary to successfully get into graduate school. I will be attending Texas Tech University in Fall 2022 pursuing a MS in biology.
Author: Alex Bowers, Botany and Environmental Earth Science
Advisor: Jonathan Bauer, Biology
Graduate Advisor: Karly Cazzato, Biology
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