Department of Biology, University of Miami, 1301 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, Florida, 33146, USA.
Archbold Biological Station, 123 Main Drive, Venus, Florida, 33960, USA.
New Phytol. 2023 Dec;240(5):2007-2019. doi: 10.1111/nph.19249. Epub 2023 Sep 22.
Allelopathy is a common and important stressor that shapes plant communities and can alter soil microbiomes, yet little is known about the direct effects of allelochemical addition on bacterial and fungal communities or the potential for allelochemical-selected microbiomes to mediate plant performance responses, especially in habitats naturally structured by allelopathy. Here, we present the first community-wide investigation of microbial mediation of allelochemical effects on plant performance by testing how allelopathy affects soil microbiome structure and how these microbial changes impact germination and productivity across 13 plant species. The soil microbiome exhibited significant changes to 'core' bacterial and fungal taxa, bacterial composition, abundance of functionally important bacterial and fungal taxa, and predicted bacterial functional genes after the addition of the dominant allelochemical native to this habitat. Furthermore, plant performance was mediated by the allelochemical-selected microbiome, with allelopathic inhibition of plant productivity moderately mitigated by the microbiome. Through our findings, we present a potential framework to understand the strength of plant-microbial interactions in the presence of environmental stressors, in which frequency of the ecological stress may be a key predictor of microbiome-mediation strength.
化感作用是一种常见且重要的胁迫因子，它影响植物群落的形成，并能改变土壤微生物群落，但人们对化感物质的添加如何直接影响细菌和真菌群落，以及化感物质选择的微生物群落是否有可能调节植物性能反应知之甚少，特别是在天然受化感作用影响的生境中。在这里，我们通过测试化感作用如何影响土壤微生物群落结构，以及这些微生物变化如何影响 13 种植物物种的萌发和生产力，首次全面调查了微生物对化感作用影响植物性能的介导作用。在添加了该生境中主要的化感物质后，土壤微生物组中‘核心’细菌和真菌分类群、细菌组成、功能重要的细菌和真菌分类群的丰度以及预测的细菌功能基因发生了显著变化。此外，植物的性能受到化感物质选择的微生物群落的介导，微生物群落中度缓解了化感作用对植物生产力的抑制。通过我们的发现，我们提出了一个理解存在环境胁迫时植物-微生物相互作用强度的潜在框架，其中生态胁迫的频率可能是微生物介导强度的关键预测因子。
