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Multiple biotic factors mediate the invasion success of Chromolaena odorata

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Abstract

Community resistance plays a crucial role in the successful invasion of alien plants. However, our understanding of how soil legacy effects of native species richness, parasitic plants, competition and soil microbes contribute to community resistance remain unclear. To compare the legacy effects of soil conditioning and the current effects of plant interactions, we performed an experiment in which Chromolaeana odorata (invader) growth was measured with or without competition on live and sterile soils with different conditioning histories (species richness). Overall, our research indicated that C. odorata outperformed two native species across treatments, however, this advantage was smaller on soils with species rich histories and with competition from current plant growth. Our findings also revealed that both the soil legacy effects of native richness and competition negatively impact the growth of C. odorata, and native plants tend to produce more biomass in soils with greater diversity and under competitive conditions (5.0%). Interestingly, the holoparasitic plant C. chinensis decreased native plant growth (− 40%) more than C. odorata growth (− 11%). Further, C. chinensis did not parasitize C. odorata on sterilized soil. Furthermore, C. odorata did not experience limitations from parasitism in sterilized soil, as indicated by a slight increase in biomass of 2.3%. These results indicated that soils with diverse plant histories, competition from native plants, and lower C. chinensis parasitism will synergistically decrease C. odorata invasion. This study underscores that community resistance to C. odorata is governed by an interplay of multiple biotic factors, both individually and in combination. Simultaneously, this study contributes to a theoretical foundation for understanding the successful invasion of alien plants.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Zhengying Wang for taking care of the potted plants and Yanmei Liu for their assistance in collecting the biomass data, and Shan Jia provided conceptual figure help. We are very thankful to the Associate Editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions.

Funding

This work was supported by the Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (202201AT070609), the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFF1302402) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171660) and the 14th Five-Year Plan of **shuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences (E3ZKFF3B, E3ZKFF9B) and the “Yunnan Revitalization Talent Support Program” in Yunnan Province.

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  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, **shuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Mengla, 666303, Yunnan, China

    Mingbo Chen, Weitao Li & Yulong Zheng

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  1. Mingbo Chen
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Contributions

Mingbo Chen: data curation, writing- original draft preparation. Weitao Li: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing- original draft preparation. Yulong Zheng: visualization, investigation, writing- reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Weitao Li.

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Chen, M., Li, W. & Zheng, Y. Multiple biotic factors mediate the invasion success of Chromolaena odorata. Biol Invasions (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-024-03391-6

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