PubMed · 2026-05-22
Invasive plants are better than native plants at detecting and avoiding their own roots underground, helping them reduce self-competition. Crucially, invasive plants maintain this ability even in disturbed soils, while natives lose it — giving invaders a lasting competitive edge.
In split-root experiments across five invasive-native plant pairs, invasive plants consistently reduced root allocation toward their own kind more strongly than native counterparts.
Native plants showed normal root segregation in fresh soil, but lost it entirely when grown in soil previously conditioned by either invasive or native plants; invasive plants were unaffected in either soil type.
The collapse of root segregation in native plants was correlated with shifts in soil fungal and bacterial community composition caused by prior plant occupancy.