Insect herbivory reshapes a native leaf microbiome.

ABSTRACT: Insect herbivory is pervasive in plant communities, but its impact on microbial plant colonizers is not well-studied in natural systems. By calibrating sequencing-based bacterial detection to absolute bacterial load, we find that the within-host abundance of most leaf microbiome (phyllosphere) taxa colonizing a native forb is amplified within leaves affected by insect herbivory. Herbivore-associated bacterial amplification reflects community-wide compositional shifts towards lower ecological diversity, but the extent and direction of such compositional shifts can be interpreted only by quantifying absolute abundance. Experimentally eliciting anti-herbivore defences reshaped within-host fitness ranks among Pseudomonas spp. field isolates and amplified a subset of putatively phytopathogenic

SUBMITTER: Humphrey PT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7332206 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature