Ecological consequences of novel plant-soil interactions under changing climate

Project description

Plants and soil biota are expected to shift their distributions in response to climate change at different rates, giving rise to novel plant-soil biota interactions. The consequences of these interactions still remain unexplored, even though novel plant-soil interactions could play a key role in shaping plant community structure and ecosystem processes under climate change. In this project we will address the following questions:

• How rapidly are novel plant and soil organisms able to establish in communities once dispersal barriers are overcome?
• What are the consequences of novel plant-soil interactions for the outcome of plant competition and plant community structure?
• What is the potential contribution of novel plant-soil interactions to altered nutrient and carbon cycling under climate change?

To tackle these questions, we combine carefully controlled field and glasshouse experiments with sequencing of soil microbial communities, plant community analyses and measurements of ecosystem processes. To set our findings within a broad geographic context, we take advantage of a network of 19 whole community transplant experiments, the external page TransPlant network, to study the emergence of novel plant-soil interactions and their possible impacts on ecosystem processes across the northern hemisphere.