ABSTRACT
Most of the studies exploring the effects of plant invasions have focused on aboveground flora and fauna (Levine et al. 2003), although soil organisms play important roles in regulating ecosystem-level processes (Wardle et al. 2004), and soils contain much of the biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems (Torsvik et al. 1990, Vandenkoornhuyse et al. 2002). This is mainly because aboveground communities are relatively easy to observe and quantify (Belnap and Phillips 2001) and also because there are methodological limitations in studying belowground diversity.
