Abstract
The effects of host age and spatial location on bacterial community composition in the English Oak tree (Quercus robur)
Highlights
Many lines of evidence suggest that microbes are crucial for plant health and function (Kim et al, 2011; Berendsen et al, 2012), and yet we have a relatively poor understanding of which mechanisms shape the plantassociated microbial community or how this might in-turn influence host traits. plant microbiome research has primarily focused on the below ground portion of the plant, knowledge of the phylloplane is increasing (Lindow and Brandl, 2003; Vorholt, 2012), demonstrating an important role in shaping plant phenotype
We identified a weak negative correlation between tree size and species richness when controlling for uneven sampling of individual trees (GLM, F1,87=4.13, p=0.0453, pseudo R2=0.048) (Figure 2.)
Observed OTU count was used as the measure of species richness, the result was non-significant when Faith’s phylogenetic distance or Chao 1 estimator (Chao et al, 2004) was used (p=0.12 and 0.16 respectively)
Summary
Many lines of evidence suggest that microbes are crucial for plant health and function (Kim et al, 2011; Berendsen et al, 2012), and yet we have a relatively poor understanding of which mechanisms shape the plantassociated microbial community or how this might in-turn influence host traits. plant microbiome research has primarily focused on the below ground portion of the plant (the rhizosphere), knowledge of the phylloplane (the microbial composition of leaves) is increasing (Lindow and Brandl, 2003; Vorholt, 2012), demonstrating an important role in shaping plant phenotype. (Lambais et al, 2014) may be important given that bacterial pathogens often invade the host through wounds in the bark (Tattar, 2012; Misas-Villamil et al, 2013) This variation among tissues mirrors what is observed in other long-lived hosts, including humans, where data is most abundant; distinct bacterial communities have been isolated from different skin sites (Grice et al, 2009) and these differences appear stable over time (Costello et al, 2009). Such variation is likely to exist across individual plant microbiomes given that they can be heritable (Peiffer et al, 2013), shaped by host genetics (Bodenhausen et al, 2014; Beckers et al, 2016), and play functional roles that include sensitizing the plant immune system (Pieterse et al, 2014)
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