A series of advances in the ecological impact of invasive alien plants

Plant evolution overwhelms geographical origin in shaping rhizosphere fungi across latitudes

The group of Lu Xinmin, a professor in the School of Plant Science and Technology and PI of the State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microorganisms at Huazhong Agricultural University, used the framework of biogeography and plant phylogeny for the first time to compare the community structure of more than 60 common and co-occurring invasive and native plant inter-rhizosphere fungi in China by integrating field surveys and greenhouse control experiments across latitudes (Figure 1). The results were published as "Plant evolution overwhelms geographical origin in shaping rhizosphere fungi across latitudes" in Global Change Biology.

The study found that plant inter-rhizosphere fungal community structure was mainly determined by plant phylogenetic relationships, while the effects of plant origin (invasive or native) and abiotic environment (e.g. climate, soil physicochemical properties) were weak; the abundance and relative content of invasive and native plant inter-rhizosphere specific fungi OUT were not significantly different; the inter-rhizosphere fungal community composition differed more between invasive and native plant species between 25.2-29.2 N latitude. The interspecific differences in the composition of inter-rhizosphere fungal communities among native plant species were greater between 25.2-29.2 N than among native plant species. These findings do not support the natural enemy escape hypothesis and the homogenization of native organisms due to plant invasion, and suggest that native organisms can rapidly adapt to foreign invasive organisms to form new interactions.

Members of the group conducted a latitudinal gradient survey (across 14 latitudes and 49 sample sites) with the invasive plant Leptospermum cinerea, and explored for the first time the latitudinal variation patterns of different biological communities coexisting with invasive plants and their driving factors. The results found that the diversity and composition of plants (including native and exotic plants), arthropods (including herbivores, predators and scavengers, etc.) and soil fungi (including pathogenic, symbiotic and saprophytic fungi, etc.) that coexisted with drought-loving lianas showed different latitudinal patterns due to differences in response to changes in climate and biotic factors (e.g., plant invasion) (Fig. 2); compared with climate Plant invasion and other biological factors have a stronger role in regulating the diversity and composition of some taxa (e.g., soil pathogenic fungi) than climate. The study showed that climate and exotic plant invasion synchronously regulated biome composition, but the relative strength of their effects varied depending on the taxa. The results are presented as "Latitudinal variation in the diversity and composition of various organisms associated with an exotic plant: the role of climate and plant invasion". The results were published in New Phytologist under the title "Latitudinal variation in the diversity and composition of various organisms associated with an exotic plant: the role of climate and plant invasion".

D. students Chunqiang Wei and Lunlun Gao are the co-first authors of the article on Global Change Biology; D. students Lunlun Gao, Chunqiang Wei and Master student Hao Xu are the co-first authors of the article on New Phytologist. Associate Professor Xiaoyan Liu from the Department of Entomology participated in some of the research, and Professor Xinmin Lu was the corresponding author of two papers. The above research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Special Funds for Basic Research Operations of Central Universities and the Start-up Funds for High-level Talents.