Rutger Wilschut

In new projects on this topic, I therefore use mesh pots to directly examine the influence of surrounding plant communities on soil conditioning effects of single plants, allowing the establishment of ‘regular’ two-phase plant-soil feedback experiments. (5/5). To be continued!

04.09.2025 14:19 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Although interesting, the results were difficult to interpret (and the project required three experimental phases), especially because legacy effects of individual plants were likely also modified by changing competitive hierarchies with increasing plant diversity. (4/5)

04.09.2025 14:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Key message 2: Unlike expected, diversity did not predictably alter plant-soil feedback interactions between conspecific and heterospecific plant species, indicating that contributions of belowground host-specialists and host-generalists to plant-soil feedbacks were not clearly affected. (3/5)

04.09.2025 14:15 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Key message 1: the legacy effects on future plant performance that individual plants leave in the soil depend on the diversity of the surrounding plant community. (2/5)

04.09.2025 14:14 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Community diversity shapes persisting soil legacy effects of individual plant species on subsequent plant performance Positive plant diversity–productivity relationships have partly been attributed to decreasing abundances of belowground specialist plant antagonists with increasing plant diversity, resulting in less...

Published last week in @oikosjournal.bsky.social: our paper on my last big experimental project from my previous position @uni-konstanz.de, in which we examined how plant diversity alters soil legacy effects of individual plants on plant-soil feedback interactions. doi.org/10.1002/oik..... (1/5)

04.09.2025 14:14 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

In a new MSc-thesis project, we are examining whether structural root traits can help to understand plant responses to the interactive effects of drought and eutrophication. We started to use relatively tall pots to allow more plasticity in root responses. Curious to see what will come out!

24.07.2025 14:23 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Last Wednesday we went on our yearly Alpine excursion as part of the Global Change Ecology course, this time to Flümserberg. Some unexpected rain and a couple of claps of thunder, but otherwise great fun, nice scenery and beautiful flora.

04.07.2025 13:02 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Some nice student projects currently going on at @uni-konstanz.de: we are comparing the effects of different drought treatments and microbial presence on root traits of Plantago and how common and rare native and non-native plants respond to nutrient availability and local soil communities.

27.06.2025 11:14 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

The most interesting result, in my opinion, is that whereas rhizosphere communities are resilient, phyllosphere communities can become increasingly dissimilar over time, so that plants in one year interact with a partly different phyllosphere microbiome compared to the previous year.

11.04.2025 15:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Decoupling Responses of Phyllosphere and Rhizosphere Bacterial Communities to Spatiotemporal Environmental Changes By integrating a comprehensive field survey with a transplantation experiment across elevations, we showed decoupling responses of rhizosphere and phyllosphere bacterial communities in three plant sp...

New study, in which we combined data from a field survey and an altitudinal plant transplantation experiment to understand simultaneous responses of phyllosphere and rhizosphere communities to abiotic changes associated with time/seasonality and warming: doi.org/10.1111/gcb.....

11.04.2025 14:55 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Last week returned to @uni-konstanz.de for a new position as Research Associate in the Ecology Group. Good to be back! The forests around uni are still beautiful :)

19.02.2025 20:26 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Artificial particles and soil communities interactively change heterospecific plant-soil feedbacks - Plant and Soil Background and aims Microplastics affect plant growth and change abiotic and biotic soil properties, such as soil structure and soil-community composition. However, how microplastics affect plant-soil...

Haven't been too active here yet, but will try to post more regularly from now on! To start with, some new research on the effects of microplastics on plant-soil feedbacks, led by Benedikt Speißer of @uni-konstanz.de: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

08.02.2025 19:18 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Contrasting responses of naturalized alien and native plants to native soil biota and drought Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Happy to share some new research - results of a BSc-thesis project examining drought impacts on plant-soil interactions of native and non-native plant species. In short: drought affects non-natives more than natives, but the latter benefit less from soil communities. See: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

29.08.2024 07:24 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

We made a nice little hike around the Zugerberg yesterday.
Some pretty stuff out there already!

25.02.2024 22:20 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Nice first day of the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting yesterday: great plenary lectures, parallel sessions and a special evening programme, during which our minister of education, culture and science Prof. Robbert Dijkgraaf shared his views on the links between science, society and policy.

14.02.2024 08:50 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Yup, was looking for a less moody place :). And indeed...we should catch up!

08.02.2024 10:10 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0