Plant-soil feedbacks, their mechanisms and role in plant communities

Plants can influence both the abiotic and biotic properties of the soil they grow in and in such way modified soil can affect performance of the plants growing simultaneously or subsequently in this soil, in a mechanism called plant-soil feedback. Plant-soil feedback can occur between two individuals of the same species (conspecifi c feedback) or between individuals of two different species (heterospecific feedback). So far, plant-soil feedbacks have been shown to play role in vegetation succession, plant invasions and coexistence of species in plant communities. However, mostly due to complexity of processes involved in plant-soil feedbacks, there are still blank pages in our understandings of these plant-soil interactions. This thesis aimed to (i) investigate relationship between heterospecific feedbacks and plant phylogeny, species traits and co-occurrence patterns in plant communities; (ii) disentangle the biotic and abiotic components of soil feedback and evaluate their importance for plant species from a primary successional sequence; (iii) study the individual components of plant-soil feedbacks in a species rich grassland and evaluate their persistence in soil; and (iv) investigate if plant-soil feedbacks can be shaped by presence of soil mesofauna. I found that (i) heterospecific plant-soil..