Seasonal assembly of nectar microbial communities across angiosperm
plant species: assessing contributions of climate and plant traits
- Jacob Cecala
, - Leta Landucci,
- Rachel Vannette
![](https://d197for5662m48.cloudfront.net/assets/icons/omniauth/orcid-ca37582cd91a671ed5cec57770e0e96c01b4b79b8b5b75d8598fc1ddac18c974.svg)
Abstract
Plant-microbe associations are ubiquitous, but parsing the contributions
of dispersal, host filtering, competition, and the environment on
microbial community composition is challenging. Floral nectar-inhabiting
microbes offer a tractable system to disentangle community assembly
processes. We inoculated a synthetic community of yeasts and bacteria
into nectars of 31 phylogenetically diverse plant species while
excluding pollinators. We monitored weather conditions and, after 24
hours, collected and cultured communities. We found a strong signature
of plant species on resulting microbial abundance and community
composition, in part explained by plant phylogeny and nectar peroxide
content, but not measured floral morphological traits. Higher maximum
and minimum temperatures increased microbial growth overall and favored
certain microbes over others. Our work supports the roles of plant
identity and abiotic conditions in assembly and growth of
plant-associated microbial communities and finds evidence for
diversity-productivity relationships within plant-associated
microbiomes.Submitted to Ecology Letters Submission Checks Completed
Assigned to Editor
Reviewer(s) Assigned
25 Jun 2024Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending