Life Sciences Commons^™

Bush Lupine Mortality, Altered Resource Availability, And Alternative Vegetaion States, John L. Maron, Robert L. Jefferies

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Nitrogen-fixing plants, by altering the availability of soil N, potentially facilitate plant invasion. Here we describe how herbivore-driven mortality of a native N-fixing shrub, bush lupine (Lupinus arboreus), increases soil N and light availability, which promotes invasion by introduced grasses to the detriment of a native plant community.

Soils under live and dead lupine stands contained large amounts of total N, averaging 3.14 mg N/g dry mass of soil (398 g/m²) and 3.45 mg N/g dry mass of soil (438 g/m²), respectively, over four years. In contrast, similar lupine-free soil was low in N …