Organized Oral Session
Athmanathan Senthilnathan
Stony Brook University, New York, United States
Po-Ju Ke
National Taiwan University, Taiwan (Republic of China)
Stephanie Kivlin
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
Plant communities are an integral part of terrestrial ecosystems. Consequently, we need to understand the processes that drive plant community assembly to predict the effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Community ecology provides us with a rich theory to understand plant community dynamics. This has enabled us to explain various biodiversity patterns over space and time. However, belowground interactions of plants have been at the periphery of community ecology theory, despite mounting evidence suggesting that plants can affect soil abiotic properties and microbial communities in a way that will influence the performance of subsequent plant generations (i.e., plant-soil feedback). By selectively associating with microbes in the soil, plants modify the abundance of different microbial functional groups. Some soil microbes, like nitrogen fixers, modify soil properties in a specific way which increases plant growth, whereas others, like soil pathogens, affect plants negatively. Plants also directly affect abiotic soil properties, for example by modifying water percolation, which affects the plants. As empirical studies established the ubiquity and significance of positive and negative plant-soil feedbacks, different theoretical models were concurrently developed for studying the community-level consequences of plant-soil feedbacks. Our goal in this organized oral session is to identify the frontiers of plant-soil feedback research and integrate them with theoretical frameworks of community dynamics that could incorporate them.
Presenting Author: Jiang Jiang – Nanjing Forestry University
Presenting Author: Kerri Crawford – University of Houston
Co-author: Jakob J. Joachin – University of Houston
Co-author: Elliot Lagueux – University of Houston
Co-author: Noah Luecke – University of Houston
Co-author: Aidan Marshall – Florida Southern College
Co-author: Amber Ooi – University of Houston
Co-author: Jan H. Dudenhoeffer – Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston
Presenting Author: Melanie Merritt – University of Georgia
Co-author: Anny Chung – University of Georgia
Presenting Author: Zachary R. Miller – University of Chicago
Co-author: Pablo Lechon – University of Chicago
Co-author: Stefano Allesina – University of Chicago
Presenting Author: Xinyi Yan – University of Texas at Austin
Co-author: Jonathan M. Levine – Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University
Co-author: Gaurav S. Kandlikar, n/a – University of Missouri
Presenting Author: Athmanathan Senthilnathan – Stony Brook University