Our team member Annamária Fenesi has just finished a project funded by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI
Project title: Interspecific relationships among plants in an era of change: an experimental approach
Grant number: PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2016-0731
Host institute: Babeș-Bolyai University, Hungarian Department of Biology and Ecology, Cluj, Romania
Project leader: Annamária Fenesi
Menthor: Eszter Ruprecht
Short presentation of the three finished experiments: here
Scientific results of the project: here
I am highly grateful for this project to the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI. It was a great opportunity and a nice experience to carry over these experiments, to work with talented students and to consolidate our research team with my menthor Eszter Ruprecht. Thank you very much!
The executive summary of the project:
Alterations in plant-plant interactions due to current environmental changes such as invasion of alien species or climate change can cascade upwards to modify community and also ecosystem structure. Therefore, studying interactions among plants influenced by the drivers of change might help understand and predict the impacts of environmental change on whole communities. My main objective was to study the interactions among plant species in a complex manner: taking into account both the positive (facilitation) and negative (competition) interactions between plants, involving different plant life cycle stages, and integrating the effect of climate change and/or biological invasions.
We carried out three timely experiments in controlled environment:
(1) We tested the effect of density, seed size, taxonomic affiliation, and native/invasive status on seed-seed interactions in optimal conditions and under drought stress, simulating the local effects of climate change;
(2) We studied the plant-plant interactions by manipulating the soil biota of the experimental units. Specifically, the performance and competitive ability of invasive and native grassland species were followed in the presence or absence of soil biota conditioned by different grassland species.
(3) We also tested the spatial effect of species-specific soil biota on the performance of grassland species.
The experiments took place in a roofed, wired outdoor experimental site or in a plant ecology laboratory with climate chambers in the “Alexandru Borza” Botanical Garden from Cluj-Napoca.