Invasive Ageratina adenophora can maintain its ecological advantages over time through releasing its autotoxicity by accumulating a bacterium Bacillus cereus

Ai-Ping Wu; Zhong-Xi Bai; Jian Li; Hui Liu; Fa-Lin Chen; Man-Yun Zhang; Yan-Hong Wang; Mohamed Abdelaziz Balah; Ji-Hui Wen

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e12757

Invasive Ageratina adenophora can maintain its ecological advantages over time through releasing its autotoxicity by accumulating a bacterium Bacillus cereus

Heliyon. 2022 Dec 30;9(1):e12757. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e12757. eCollection 2023 Jan.

Authors

Ai-Ping Wu^{1

2}, Zhong-Xi Bai¹, Jian Li³, Hui Liu¹, Fa-Lin Chen¹, Man-Yun Zhang¹, Yan-Hong Wang^{1

4}, Mohamed Abdelaziz Balah⁵, Ji-Hui Wen^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Ecology Department, College of Resources and Environment, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Rural Ecosystem Health in Dongting Lake Area, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China.
² State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China.
⁴ School of Forestry and Bio-technology, Zhejiang Agriculture & Forestry University, Hangzhou, 311300, China.
⁵ Plant Protection Department,Ecology and Dry Lands Agriculture Division, Desert Research Center, 1 Mathaf El Matariya Street, El Matariya, 11753, Cairo, Egypt.
⁶ Institute of Plant Protection, Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changsha, 410125, China.

Abstract

Plant invasive success is attributed to invaders' ecological advantages over their native neighbors. However, increasing evidence suggests that these advantages are expected to attenuate over time because of natural enemy accumulation, ecological evolution of native species and autotoxicity. We determined how an invasive Ageratina adenophora could remain its competitive advantages over time by avoiding its autotoxicity. Our results highlighted that the autotoxicity of A. adenophora in its invaded soil was reduced by some microbes. Moreover, an autotoxic allelochemical, 2-coumaric acid glucoside, detected in the invaded soil, demonstrated distinctly autotoxic effects on its seed germination and seedling growth. However, the autotoxic effects were greatly alleviated by a bacterium Bacillus cereus, accumulated by A. adenophora. Furthermore, the allelochemical could be almost completely degraded by B. cereus within 96 h. Accordingly, we speculate that A. adenophora could aggregate B. cereus to release its autotoxicity maintaining its competitive advantages over time.

Keywords: Advantage; Autotoxicity; Bacterium; Decline; Detoxification; Invasion; Over time; Release.