Rooting Theories of Plant Community Ecology in Microbial Interactions

By James D. Bever, Ian A. DICKIE, E. Facelli, J. Facelli, J. Klironomos, M. Moora, Matthias C. Rillig, W. Stock, M. Tibbett, M. Zobel. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2010

789 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Predominant frameworks for understanding plant ecology have an aboveground bias that neglects soil micro-organisms. This is inconsistent with recent work illustrating the importance of soil microbes in terrestrial ecology. Microbial effects have been incorporated into plant community dynamics using ideas of niche modification and plant-soil community feedbacks. Here, we expand and integrate qualitative conceptual models of plant niche and feedback to explore implications of microbial interactions for understanding plant community ecology. At the same time we review the empirical evidence for these processes. We also consider common mycorrhizal networks, and suggest these are best interpreted within the feedback framework. Finally, we apply our integrated model of niche and feedback to understanding plant coexistence, monodominance, and invasion ecology.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/47739cad4f3ea4ea3c839c86de4a2e7705d9e63b

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

A trait‐based analysis of the role of phosphorus vs. nitrogen enrichment in plant species loss across North‐west European grasslands (2011, background): “1998; Murray, Frank & Gehring 2010), the observed susceptibility of certainmycotrophic species in this studymay thus also be explained through the loss of specific suitable fungal partners (Bever et al. 2010).”
Global patterns of plant root colonization intensity by mycorrhizal fungi explained by climate and soil chemistry (2015, background): “This suggests that these factors are chief regulators of the degree of intimacy of the relation between plants and fungi at the community level, and therefore the involvement of mycorrhizal fungi in plant-associated global C and nutrient cycling (Bever et al., 2010; Hoeksema et al., 2010; Veresoglou”
Inoculation with a Native Soil Community Advances Succession in a Grassland Restoration (2012, background): “The soil community can play a critical role in structuring both native and restored plant communities (Bever 2003; Van der Heijden et al. 2008; Bever et al. 2010).”
Assembly and ecological function of the root microbiome across angiosperm plant species (2018, background): “Differential association with particular soil microorganisms is thought to increase soil resource partitioning between plant species (16).”
Where, when and how plant-soil feedback matters in a changing world (2016, background): “(Kardol & Wardle 2010) and invasions (Reinhart & Callaway 2006; Bever et al. 2010).”
Microbially Mediated Plant Functional Traits (2011, background): “In addition to these specific microbes, plant–soil feedbacks involving the microbial community in general are widely recognized to play a major role in species range expansions and invasions (Bever et al., 2010; Mitchell et al., 2006).”
Mycorrhizas in changing ecosystems1,2 (2014, background): “relation to established conspecific trees (Bever et al. 2010).”
Direct and indirect effects of climate change on soil microbial and soil microbial‐plant interactions: What lies ahead? (2015, background): “…we do know that differential dispersal abilities among plants and microbes can alter plant establishment and plant productivity as well as the interactions among plants in a community (Bever et al. 1997, Nuñez et al. 2009, Bever et al. 2010), for instance, via shifts in plant litter input quality.”
Mycorrhizal feedbacks generate positive frequency dependence accelerating grassland succession (2018, background): “However, the expectation of loss of diversity due to positive feedback is predicted to occur with plant community succession which could take many growing seasons (Bever et al., 2010; Bever, Westover, & Antonovics, 1997).”
Is successional research nearing its climax? New approaches for understanding dynamic communities (2015, background): “Interactions between plants and soil microbial communities have emerged as major drivers of community structure, diversity and dynamics (Kardol et al. 2007; Bever et al. 2010; van der Putten et al. 2013) and therefore represent potential drivers of successional processes as regulators of differentia”
How mycorrhizal associations drive plant population and community biology (2020, background): “Whereas the detrimental effects of parasites and pathogens can be relatively easily observed, the benefits of mutualistic microorganisms such as mycorrhizal fungi are not as immediately apparent in natural conditions (5), and consequently their effects on plant populations and communities are less w”