Plants and microbes are intricately linked, with microbes serving in a variety of different roles from mutualists to parasites/pathogens. These microorganisms can inhabit a variety of niches within associated plant hosts like roots, leaves, and stems, and the nature of these interactions can fluctuate through time. Understanding how plants and microbes interact, and the functional role of these associations is a pressing question in microbial ecology. Unraveling the many interactions between plant hosts and microbes can result in novel uses of microorganisms to aid in plant health, productivity, and altering ecosystem functions like carbon sequestration and nitrogen cycling. In this project, we explore how Populus trees interact with archaea, bacteria, and fungi within different plant niches, across plant hosts, and through time. Specifically, we used an amplicon based sequencing approach to examine microbial communities across multiple genotypes of Populus deltoides and Populus trichocarpa in a common garden in East Tennessee.
Results/Conclusions
Overall, we found that microbial communities vary significantly across different plant niches, and microbial community assembly varied across different plant hosts. Two prominent Populus fungal pathogens had a significant impact on overall microbial community spatial variability and microbial community assembly within plant leaves and roots. This work highlights the complex nature of these interactions and the necessity of sampling through time to fully understand these dynamics.