OPUS: Microbial Dynamics and the Structure of Plant Communities

土壤微生物在植物健康中发挥着关键作用，既通过植物病原体的有害影响，又通过与细菌和真菌互利共生者的联系增加对基本土壤资源的利用而产生有益影响。 因此，植物种群的生存能力和繁殖成功取决于土壤群落的组成，陆地植物生产力和群落组成的长期轨迹取决于土壤微生物群落内的动态。 实验操作已经证明，土壤微生物群落随着其当地植物宿主而变化，并且这种变化通常导致该宿主的性能下降。 例如，在农作物中，单一作物种植后微生物群落的变化导致产量下降，从而促使采取轮作战略。 最近的实验工作表明，这些相同的动态可以促进植物物种的替代和维护未管理的植物群落的多样性。 虽然这些过程有强有力的证据，但这项工作尚未被纳入对微生物动力学驱动植物群落模式的长期潜力的全面理解。 本研究计画的目标是将植物与微生物相互作用的生态学证据整合成一本专着。 该专着将建立从植物病原体的毒力和稳定性的利益从植物互利朝着一个框架，预测微生物调解植物动态的决定因素。 该框架将允许预测植物群落组成随时间的变化，并跨越环境扰动。 该项目将产生一本专著，作为植物生态学发展领域的全面综合，从而对本科生和研究生培训有用。 该专著将推动关于植物-微生物相互作用及其后果的进一步工作，所制定的框架将有助于预测陆地群落对气候变化等人为干扰的反应。

Soil microbes play key roles in plant health, both through the detrimental effects of plant pathogens and the beneficial effects of increased access to essential soil resources through associations with bacterial and fungal mutualists. As a result the viability and reproductive success of plant populations depends upon the composition of the soil community and the long-term trajectory of terrestrial plant productivity and community composition depends upon the dynamics within the soil microbial community. Experimental manipulations have demonstrated that the soil microbial community changes with its local plant host and often this change leads to a decline in performance of that host. In agricultural crops, for example, the change in microbial community following mono-cropping leads to a yield decline, thereby motivating a strategy of crop rotation. Recent experimental work suggests that these same dynamics can contribute to the replacement of plant species and the maintenance of diversity in unmanaged plant communities. While there is strong evidence for these processes, this work has not been integrated into a comprehensive understanding of the long-term potential for microbial dynamics to drive plant community patterns. The goal of this research project is to synthesize the evidence on the ecology of plant-microbe interactions within a monograph. The monograph will build from the determinants of virulence in plant pathogens and of stability of benefits from plant mutualists toward a framework that predicts microbial mediation of plant dynamics. This framework will allow predictions of changes of plant community composition across time, and across environmental perturbations. This project will produce a monograph that will serve as a comprehensive synthesis of a growing area of plant ecology and will thereby be useful for undergraduate and graduate training. The monograph will motivate further work on the plant-microbe interactions and their consequences, and the framework developed will facilitate prediction of responses of terrestrial communities to anthropogenic disturbance, such as climate change.