Invasibility and Recoverability of a Native Plant Community Following Invasion Depend on its Successional Stages

Abstract Background: Exotic species invasions represent important causes of biodiversity loss in ecosystems. Yet, knowledge remains limited on the invasion advantage of exotic species (invasibility of native plants) and the ability of native species to recover following invasions at different stages of succession.Results: We selected three grasses (Setaria viridis, Artemisia gmelinii, and Bothriochloa ischaemum) representing early, middle, and late successional species, respectively, and an exotic species (Panicum virgatum) from a stable grassland community. Four types of field soil were collected to treat the three early, middle, and later successional species, plus the exotic species. We examined the invasion ability of the exotic species on native communities and the recoverability of these communities following invasion across succession. We compared the performance of the four plant species grown in their “own” and “other” soils in a 2-year glasshouse experiment. Here we show that exotic species performed better in soils of early and mid-successional species, owing to higher soil nutrients and microbial residues, than in the soil of later successional species. In the soil of exotic species, early and mid-successional species exhibited poor growth, while that of later successional species was unchanged.Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that soil nutrients and microbial residues create a soil legacy regulating the invasibility and recoverability (or resilience) of native plant communities and how it changed with vegetation succession.