In natural forests, tree leaf surfaces host diverse bacterial communities whose structure and composition are primarily driven by host species identity. Tree leaf associated microbiota have been studied in natural ecosystems but less so in urban settings, where anthropogenic pressures on trees could impact microbial communities and modify their interaction with their hosts. Additionally, trees act as vectors spreading bacterial cells in the air in urban environments due to the density of microbial cells on aerial plant surfaces. Tree leaf bacterial diversity has also been shown to influence tree community productivity, a key function of terrestrial ecosystems. However, most urban microbiome studies have focused on the built environment, improving our understanding of indoor microbial communities but leaving much to be understood especially in the non-built microbiome. Characterizing tree leaf bacterial communities along an urban gradient is thus key to understanding the impact of anthropogenic pressures on urban tree-bacteria interactions and on the overall urban microbiome. In this study, we aimed (1) to characterize phyllosphere bacterial communities of seven tree species in urban environments; and (2) to describe the changes in tree phyllosphere bacterial community structure and diversity along a gradient of increasing urban intensity and at two degrees of tree isolation.
Results/Conclusions
Our results show that, as anthropogenic pressures increase, urban leaf bacterial communities show a reduction in the abundance of the dominant class in the natural plant microbiome, the Alphaproteobacteria. Our work in the urban environment here reveals that the structure of leaf bacterial communities differs along a gradient of urban intensity. The diversity of phyllosphere microbial communities increases at higher urban intensity, also displaying a greater number and variety of associated indicator taxa than the low and medium urban gradient sites. Here, we provide the first multiple-species comparison of tree phyllosphere bacterial structure and diversity along a gradient of urban intensity. We demonstrate that urban trees possess characteristic bacterial communities compared to trees in non-urban environments, with microbial community structure on trees influenced by host species identity but also by the gradient of urban intensity and by the degree of isolation from other trees. Our results suggest that feedbacks between human activity and plant microbiomes could shape urban microbiomes.