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Background and Aims <p>Plant-soil feedback (PSF) affects plant coexistence and diversity. Although the current paradigm provides a direct experimental method to quantify PSF and explains coexistence with varying levels of success, the emphasis on pairwise interactions hinders linking PSF to community patterns.</p> Methods <p>We propose a new framework emphasizing the role of individual plants in soil dynamics. Our framework suggests a common-garden experiment to quantify PSF which is species-specific rather than focused on species pairs, which require fewer treatment groups. We illustrate how data from such an experiment can be used to quantify PSF using simulated data of plant-soil dynamics.</p> Results <p>We show that the current approach is susceptible to mispredicting coexistence due to incomplete characterization of the timescale of soil conditioning. Our proposed framework remedies this issue and expands the realm of possible coexistence outcomes dependent on the soil's history. Our proposed experiments are designed to confront the implicit assumptions in current PSF research and reveal gaps in our understanding of how plants condition the soil.</p> Conclusion <p>The shift in focus from pairwise PSF measures to species-based soil conditioning offers a better path to linking PSF to plant coexistence and community structure, and to forecasting the effects of PSF under changing environments.</p>

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Plants, soil, and coexistence: an alternative approach to modelling plant-soil feedback

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月31日

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  • Athmanathan Senthilnathan,
  • Po-Ju Ke,
  • Xinyi Yan,
  • Kerri Crawford,
  • Rafael D’Andrea

摘要

Background and Aims

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) affects plant coexistence and diversity. Although the current paradigm provides a direct experimental method to quantify PSF and explains coexistence with varying levels of success, the emphasis on pairwise interactions hinders linking PSF to community patterns.

Methods

We propose a new framework emphasizing the role of individual plants in soil dynamics. Our framework suggests a common-garden experiment to quantify PSF which is species-specific rather than focused on species pairs, which require fewer treatment groups. We illustrate how data from such an experiment can be used to quantify PSF using simulated data of plant-soil dynamics.

Results

We show that the current approach is susceptible to mispredicting coexistence due to incomplete characterization of the timescale of soil conditioning. Our proposed framework remedies this issue and expands the realm of possible coexistence outcomes dependent on the soil's history. Our proposed experiments are designed to confront the implicit assumptions in current PSF research and reveal gaps in our understanding of how plants condition the soil.

Conclusion

The shift in focus from pairwise PSF measures to species-based soil conditioning offers a better path to linking PSF to plant coexistence and community structure, and to forecasting the effects of PSF under changing environments.