title: Assessment of Habitat Suitability Is Affected by Plant-Soil Feedback: Comparison of Field and Garden Experiment.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Field translocation experiments (i.e., the introduction of seeds or seedlings of different species into different localities) are commonly used to study habitat associations of species, as well as factors limiting species distributions and local abundances. Species planted or sown in sites where they naturally occur are expected to perform better or equally well compared to sites at which they do not occur or are rare. This, however, contrasts with the predictions of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis and commonly reported intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback. The few previous studies indicating poorer performance of plants at sites where they naturally occur did not explore the mechanisms behind this pattern.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In this study, we used field translocation experiments established using both seeds and seedlings to study the determinants of local abundance of four dominant species in grasslands. To explore the possible effects of intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback on our results, we tested the effect of local species abundance on the performance of the plants in the field experiment. In addition, we set up a garden experiment to explore the intensity of intraspecific as well as interspecific feedback between the dominants used in the experiment.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In some cases, the distribution and local abundances of the species were partly driven by habitat conditions at the sites, and species performed better at their own sites. However, the prevailing pattern was that the local dominants performed worse at sites where they naturally occur than at any other sites. Moreover, the success of plants in the field experiment was lower in the case of higher intraspecific abundance prior to experimental setup. In the garden feedback experiment, two of the species performed significantly worse in soils conditioned by their species than in soils conditioned by the other species. In addition, the performance of the plants was significantly correlated between the two experiments, suggesting that plant-soil feedback is a likely explanation of the patterns observed in the field.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  All of the results indicate that intraspecific negative plant-soil feedback, either biotic or abiotic, may be a key factor determining the performance of the plants in our field translocation experiment. The possible effects of negative feedback should thus be considered when evaluating results of translocation experiments in future studies.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Průhonice, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hemrová
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.|Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Průhonice, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Jana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Knappová
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.|Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Průhonice, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Zuzana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Münzbergová
mesh_terms: D018153:Czech Republic; D017753:Ecosystem; D000072506:Gardens; D065948:Grassland; D010944:Plants; D036226:Seedlings; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D012987:Soil