Using plant-soil feedbacks to predict plant biomass in diversity experiments

Poster Number:

Presenter/Primary Author:

Leslie Forero [1]

Co-Authors:

Andrew Kulmatiski

Co-Authors:

Karen Beard

Co-Authors:

Justin Heavilin

Co-Authors:

Josephine Grenzer

Co-Authors:

Nicole Nolan

Plants are capable of creating soils that produce feedbacks upon plant growth, but the role of plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) on plant growth in communities remains unclear. We developed a full-factorial two-phase greenhouse PSF experiment and used growth and plant-soil feedback information to predict biomass for 155 different plant communities using five different plant growth models. Models that incorporated plant-soil feedback information improved all five models by 10-23%.