Towards Unraveling Macroecological Patterns in Rhizosphere Microbiomes

Brunel, Caroline; Pouteau, Robin; Dawson, Wayne; Pester, Michael; Ramirez, Kelly S.; van Kleunen, Mark

Abstract

The processes shaping rhizosphere microbial communities are currently unclear because of both a lack of knowledge about biogeographical patterns and the disconnection between plant and microbial scales.

Sequence databases have now collected a sufficient amount of data covering a range of biomes and plant taxa to allow synthesis across studies. Recently, new bioinformatic methods have been developed that allow us to overcome former spatial and taxonomic limitations.

Understanding the processes that shape rhizosphere microbial communities will provide important insights into plant ecology and evolutionary biology, and can enable us to manage microbial and plant ecosystem services.

It is generally accepted that plants locally influence the composition and activity of their rhizosphere microbiome, and that rhizosphere community assembly further involves a hierarchy of constraints with varying strengths across spatial and temporal scales. However, our knowledge of rhizosphere microbiomes is largely based on single-location and time-point studies. Consequently, it remains difficult to predict patterns at large landscape scales, and we lack a clear understanding of how the rhizosphere microbiome forms and is maintained by drivers beyond the influence of the plant. By synthesizing recent literature and collating data on rhizosphere microbiomes, we point out the opportunities and challenges offered by advances in molecular biology, bioinformatics, and data availability. Specifically, we highlight the use of exact sequence variants, coupled with existing and newly generated data to decipher the rules of rhizosphere community assembly across large spatial and taxonomic scales.

Citation

Brunel, C., Pouteau, R., Dawson, W., Pester, M., Ramirez, K. S., & van Kleunen, M. (2020). Towards Unraveling Macroecological Patterns in Rhizosphere Microbiomes. Trends in Plant Science, 25(10), 1017-1029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2020.04.015

• Journal Article Type: Review
• Online Publication Date: May 25, 2020
• Publication Date: Oct 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: May 29, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 4, 2023
• Journal: Trends in Plant Science
• Print ISSN: 1360-1385
• Electronic ISSN: 1878-4372
• Publisher: Cell Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 1017-1029
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2020.04.015
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1269824