Potential interactive effects between invasive earthworms and the invasive plant on a native plant in northeastern Ohio, USA.

We test whether the invasive earthworm and leaf litter of the invasive herbaceous plant interact to influence the native plant, , using both observational field data and a multi-year experiment. We hypothesized invader interactive effects on the native plant might result from either changes in allelochemical distribution in the soil or nutrient availability mediated by the invasive earthworm pulling leaf litter down into the soil. Within the field data we found that presence and higher soil nitrogen correlated with reduced cover, and no evidence for an invader-invader interaction. Within the factorial experiment, we found a super-additive effect of the two invaders on plant biomass only when activated carbon was present. In the absence of activated carbon, there were no differences in biomass across treatments. In the presence of activated carbon, biomass was significantly reduced by the presence of both and leaf litter. The absence of an effect of leaves without activated carbon, combined with a failure to detect arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization, suggests that indirect effects of allelochemicals on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were not the primary driver of treatment responses. Rather direct nutrient availability might influence a potential interaction between these invaders. Leaf nitrogen content was higher and leaf CO concentration was lower in the presence of , but treatment did not influence maximum photosynthetic rate. While the field data do not suggest a negative interaction between these invaders, the experiment suggests that such an interaction is possible with greater environmental stress, such as increasing nitrogen deposition. Further, even plants with rapid physiological responses to increased nitrogen availability may have other physiological limits on growth that prevent them from compensating from the harm caused by multiple invaders.