Work

Long-term warming and nitrogen addition drive interface-specific bacterial assembly and enhance soil-leaf microbial connectivity

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Plant-microbe interactions are strongly influenced by global environmental change, but bacterial responses in diversity, assembly and cross-interface connectivity across multiple plant-soil interfaces remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated bacterial communitiated interface-specific responses in bacterial community structure, assembly processes and the contributions of different interfaces to leaf endophytic bacterial communities. We found that interface identity plays the dominant role in shaping bacterial phylogenetic α- and β-diversity, with soil communities exhibiting higher diversity than phyllosphere communities. Nitrogen addition significantly reduced phylogenetic α-diversity and resulted in a more stochastic phylogenetic structure in bulk soil, whereas warming enhanced phylogenetic clustering in rhizosphere soil. Notably, warming increased phylogenetic dispersion and β-diversity of leaf epiphytic bacteria but decreased β-diversity in rhizosphere soil, indicating contrasting above- and belowground responses. Community assembly across interfaces was dominated by homogeneous selection, with stochastic processes contributing in an interface-dependent manner. Leaf endophytic communities remained remarkably stable, suggesting strong host filtering. Microbial source tracking revealed that warming and N addition increased soil-derived contributions to leaf endophytes, with over 70% of the community originating from soil under global change treatments. Overall, our results demonstrate that long-term warming and N addition drive interface-specific bacterial assembly and enhance soil to leaf microbial connectivity, highlighting the importance of a multi-interface perspective in understanding microbial responses to global change.

Source: Journal of Plant Ecology

DOI: 10.1093/jpe/rtag088