Abstract
Predicting and managing the structure and function of plant microbiomes required quantitative understanding of community assembly and predictive models of spatial distribution. Here we quantified the relative contribution of deterministic versus stochastic processes in the assembly of phyllosphere bacterial communities and developed spatial distribution modeling for keystone bacterial taxa along a latitudinal gradient, by analyzing 16S rRNA gene sequences from 1,453 leaf samples taken from 329 plant species in China. We demonstrated a latitudinal gradient in phyllosphere bacterial diversity and community composition, which was mostly explained by climates and host plant factors. We found that host selection-related factors were increasingly important in explaining bacterial assembly at higher latitudes while dispersal-related factors were more important at lower latitudes. We further showed that local plant-bacteria association networks were interconnected by hub taxa to form metacommunity-level networks, and the spatial distribution of hub taxa was controlled by host- and spatial-related factors with varying importance in tropical versus temperate regions. For the first time, we documented a latitude-dependent importance of selection versus dispersal in driving phyllosphere bacteria assembly and distribution, serving as a baseline for predicting future change of plant phyllosphere microbiome under global change and human activities.
Zihui Wang
Postdoctoral Fellow
I’m interested in understanding the factors that shape plant-microbial associations and predict their distribution and function under global change.