Soil-mediated effects of global change on plant communities depend on plant growth form

Understanding why species respond to climate change is critical for forecasting invasions, diversity, and productivity of communities. Although researchers often predict species’ distributions and productivity based on direct physiological responses to environments, theory suggests that striking shifts in community composition could arise if global change alters indirect feedbacks mediated by resources, mutualists, or antagonists. To test whether global change influences plant communities via soil-mediated feedbacks, we grew model communities in soils collected from a seven-year field manipulation of CO2, warming, and invasion. We evaluated mechanisms underlying variation in the model communities by comparing species’ growth in equivalent soil histories with, and without, experimentally reduced soil biota (via sterilization) and nutrient limitation (via fertilization). We show that grasses performed consistently across all soil history scenarios and that soil biota limited grasses more than nutrients. In contrast, forbs were differentially sensitive to soil history scenarios, with the magnitude and direction of responses to soil biota and nutrients dependent upon plant species and global change scenario. The asymmetry in importance of soil history for grasses and forbs is likely explained by differences in life history strategy. We conclude that accounting for species’ growth strategies will improve predictions of species sensitivity to altered soil feedbacks in future climates.