Plant–soil feedback (PSF), the reciprocal interaction between plants and their soil environment, is a fundamental ecological process that can influence coexistence and functional structure in plant communities. Current theory establishes that PSF may enhance diversity or lead to exclusion depending on whether soil conditioning disproportionately benefits heterospecific or conspecific individuals. However, a more complete picture of the impact of PSF requires understanding how PSF interacts with competition. To that end, here we propose an integrated mathematical model combining trait‐based competition and soil‐explicit PSF. Contrary to the current paradigm, we find that soil conditioning that disproportionately favours conspecific individuals can promote coexistence. Additionally, we show that priority effects are common when soil‐conditioning species differ in their edaphic preferences. These effects can allow species with large differences in competitive ability to coexist under certain soil conditions. Our results provide testable predictions tying community‐level functional patterns in plant communities to PSF and competition.

中文翻译：

---

植物-土壤反馈下竞争植物的共存


植物-土壤反馈（PSF）是植物与其土壤环境之间的相互作用，是一个基本的生态过程，可以影响植物群落的共存和功能结构。目前的理论认为，PSF 可能会增强多样性或导致排斥，具体取决于土壤调节是否不成比例地有利于异种个体或同种个体。然而，要更全面地了解 PSF 的影响，需要了解 PSF 如何与竞争相互作用。为此，我们在这里提出了一种结合基于性状的竞争和土壤显式 PSF 的集成数学模型。与当前的范式相反，我们发现不成比例地有利于同种个体的土壤调节可以促进共存。此外，我们表明，当土壤调节物种的土壤偏好不同时，优先效应是常见的。这些效应可以让竞争能力差异较大的物种在一定的土壤条件下共存。我们的结果提供了可测试的预测，将植物群落中的群落水平功能模式与 PSF 和竞争联系起来。