Speaker
Description
The phyllosphere comprises the tissues and the surface of plant leaves and their microbiomes. Despite its ecological significance, the factors shaping foliar endophyte communities and their interactions with trees and shrubs remain largely unexplored. Here, we use the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research platform BEF-China, where trees were planted in a broken-stick design along a tree diversity gradient. The aim of this study is to elucidate the composition of fungal communities in the phyllosphere of shrubs, which are considered phytometers of the surrounding tree neighbourhood which reflect the tree diversity in the local neighbourhood, and to disentangle the underlying drivers, such as direct spillover effects of microbes from heterospecific neighbours. Using leaf-surface sterilization followed by next-generation sequencing we analysed phyllosphere fungal communities and calculated host preference of each Amplicon Sequence Variant (ASV) using the phi (Φ) coefficient. We expected [H1] generalists and specialists to be more frequent among epiphytes and endophytes, respectively. Furthermore, we hypothesized that [H2] fungal alpha diversity of our shrub phytometers is higher in mixed compared to mono-specific tree neighbourhoods. Finally, we expected that [H3] shrubs growing in the understory catch endophytic fungi, with a higher probability of spillover depending on the degree of specialization of the fungal taxa. There was evidence in support of all our three hypotheses, which reveals the complex interplay of specialist and generalist fungi in shrub phyllosphere community assembly. In consequence, the biotic and abiotic environment might play a more important role than host species identity alone.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | Yes, I’m willing to present as a poster. |