Introduction to the Special Issue: The role of soil microbial-driven belowground processes in mediating exotic plant invasions.

Soil microbial communities are one of the multiple factors that facilitate or resist plant invasion. Regional and biogeographic studies help to determine how soil communities and the processes mediated by soil microbes are linked to other mechanisms of invasion. Both the success of plant invasions and their impacts are profoundly influenced by a wide range of soil communities and the soil processes mediated by them. With an aim to better understand the mechanisms responsible for the soil community-driven routes, a special issue of AoB PLANTS was conceived. I hope that the range of papers included in the special issue will reveal some of the complexities in soil community-mediated plant invasion.