Abstract
Plant-associated microbial communities strongly relate to host health
and productivity. Still, our knowledge of microbial community
spatiotemporal patterns in soil–plant continuum is largely limited.
Here, we explored the spatiotemporal dynamics of fungal communities
across multiple compartments (phyllosphere, leaf endosphere, soil,
rhizosphere, rhizoplane, root endosphere) of rubber tree in two
contrasting seasons collected from Hainan Island and Xishuangbanna. Our
results demonstrate that the fungal alpha and beta diversity exhibited
distinct pattern, the alpha diversity is highly dependent on seasonal
changes, while beta diversity only showed a geographical variation
pattern. The season-specific environmental factors (e.g., climatic
factors) were the most important factors in shaping fungal alpha
diversity across the soil–plant continuum. Physicochemical properties
explained some of microbial beta diversity spatiotemporal variation
observed, with leaf phosphorus (P) and soil available potassium (AK)
likely being the main factors that drove the geographical variation. We
further identified the variation of edaphic (e.g., AK) and leaf
physicochemical factors (e.g., P) were mainly caused by regional sites
(P < 0.05). Together, our study provide a solid
empirical evidence that the distinct spatiotemporal patterns of alpha
and beta diversity of rubber tree fungal diversity and significantly
expand our understanding of ecological drivers of plant-associated
microbial communities.