Microbiome‐mediated effects of habitat fragmentation on native plant performance

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation is a leading cause of biodiversity and ecosystem function loss in the Anthropocene. Despite the importance of plant-microbiome interactions to ecosystem productivity, we have limited knowledge of how fragmentation affects microbiomes and even less knowledge of its consequences for microbial interactions with plants.Combining field surveys, microbiome sequencing, manipulative experiments, and random forest models, we investigated fragmentation legacy effects on soil microbiomes in imperiled pine rocklands, tested how compositional shifts across 14 fragmentation-altered soil microbiomes affected performance and resource allocation of three native plant species, and identified fragmentation-responding microbial families underpinning plant performance.Legacies of habitat fragmentation were associated with significant changes in microbial diversity and composition (across three of four community axes). Experiments showed plants often strongly benefited from the microbiome's presence, but fragmentation-associated changes in microbiome composition also significantly affected plant performance and resource allocation across all seven metrics examined. Finally, random forest models identified ten fungal and six bacterial families important for plant performance that changed significantly with fragmentation.Our findings not only support the existence of significant fragmentation effects on natural microbiomes, but also demonstrate for the first time that fragmentation-associated changes in microbiomes can have meaningful consequences for native plant performance and investment.

Mapping the relative abundance of soil microbiome biodiversity from eDNA and remote sensing

“…Soil microbiome biodiversity as measured by eDNA reveals a complex community composition. Microbiome families respond to habitat, with the habitat comprising the physical and biotic factors that support the species' survival and reproduction (Kiesewetter and Afkhami, 2021;Wang et al, 2022;Keet et al, 2019). By considering the co-occurring eDNA and image spectroscopy data, our results demonstrate that ecosystem functions and hence related processes such as the presence and relative abundance of microbiome families, can be deductively interpreted, also in ecosystems with vegetation cover.…”

Evaluating biological properties of topsoil for post‐mining ecological restoration: different assessment methods give different results

“…Evaluating how complex community shifts directly relate to changes in plant performance is an important avenue for future research. Being able to recruit native soil microbial assemblages appears critical to reconnecting above‐belowground processes, as it has been shown that native microbes are critical for native plant emergence and establishment (Moreira‐Grez et al 2019; Kiesewetter & Afkhami 2021).…”

The Movement Ecology of Mutualism (CSEE/ESA 2022, OOS17)

“…These secondary chemicals could potentially mediate whether mutualist partners meet and travel together, and their absence in models involving the co-movement of mutualists could lead to erroneous results. Kasey Kiesewetter's presentation, Fragmentation-driven effects on beneficial microbiomes drive changes in native plant performance, focused on how habitat fragmentation and urbanization impact soil microbial communities and how this affects the plants they associate with (Kiesewetter and Afkhami 2021). They collected soil samples from undisturbed and urban locations with varying levels of fragmentation in Florida's Pine Rockland ecosystem.…”