caa a22 4500 463167864 CHVBK 20180406164804.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170326e20070101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10530-006-9008-6 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10530-006-9008-6 Mechanisms underlying the impacts of exotic annual grasses in a coastal California meadow [Elektronische Daten] [Heather Coleman, Jonathan Levine] Biological invasions can impact the abundance and diversity of native species, but the specific mechanisms remain poorly discerned. In California grasslands, invasion by European annual grasses has severely reduced the quality of habitat for native forb species. To understand how introduced grasses suppress native and exotic forbs, we examined the response of a Southern California grassland community to factorial removals of live grass and the litter produced in previous seasons. To examine the role that belowground competition for water plays in mediating the impact of grasses, we crossed grass and litter removal treatments with water addition. Our results show that forbs were almost equally suppressed by both competition from live grass and direct interference by litter. Water addition did not ameliorate the effect of grass competition, suggesting that water was not the resource for which plants compete. This evidence is consistent with the susceptibility of forbs to light limitation, especially considering that litter does not consume water or nutrients. Interestingly, despite different histories of co-occurrence with annual grass dominants, native and exotic forbs were comparably suppressed by exotic grasses. Our results indicate that suppression by both live and dead stems underlie the influence of exotic grasses on forb competitors. Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2006 Competition nationallicence Grass nationallicence Forb nationallicence Invasion nationallicence Invasive species nationallicence Santa Monica Mountains nationallicence Coleman Heather Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 90095, Los Angeles, CA, USA aut Levine Jonathan Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, 93106-9610, Santa Barbara, CA, USA aut Biological Invasions Kluwer Academic Publishers 9/1(2007-01-01), 65-71 1387-3547 9:1<65 2007 9 10530 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-006-9008-6 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-006-9008-6 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Coleman Heather Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 90095, Los Angeles, CA, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Levine Jonathan Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, 93106-9610, Santa Barbara, CA, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Biological Invasions Kluwer Academic Publishers 9/1(2007-01-01), 65-71 1387-3547 9:1<65 2007 9 10530 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer