Railway station habitats are associated with altered soil-fungal communities and higher alien plant dominance along the China-Laos Railway

Li, Weitao

JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

2026

413

Zheng, YL

Linear infrastructures are rapidly expanding worldwide, however, their ecological impacts remain poorly understood. Here we integrate vegetation, soil, and microbial surveys along a 495-km north-south transect of the recently opened China-Laos Railway to assess how railway construction influences above-belowground interactions and plant invasion dynamics, and how this depends on latitude and climate. Station habitats were characterized by lower soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, and moisture, as well as higher pH and altered C:N:P stoichiometry. These abiotic changes were accompanied by a pronounced reorganization of soil fungal communities, manifested as reduced beta diversity and increased richness of inferred plant pathogenic and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal guilds. Disturbed vegetation near railway stations supported significantly greater alien plant richness, cover, and biomass compared to adjacent undisturbed vegetation. Moreover, the mean phylogenetic distance between alien and native species decreased with increasing latitude and remained higher in less disturbed sites, suggesting a transition from species interaction-driven exclusion in the tropics to environmentdriven filtering in temperate regions. Structural equation modeling suggested that railway construction was associated with higher alien plant richness through multiple pathways, including shifts in soil nutrient stoichiometry, reduced native plant richness, and increased abundance of potential plant pathogenic fungi. Native plant richness exhibited the strongest negative relationship with alien plant richness. These findings suggest that railway-associated changes in environmental conditions and native community structure may influence patterns of plant invasion along railway corridors.