Rainfall legacy effects on the rhizosphere bacterial diversity of Brachypodium ecotypes across an aridity gradient
Sheetal, S.; Reuven, P.; Arellano, S.; Matzrafi, M.; Rosenwasser, S.; Gat, D.; Korenblum, E.
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Plants exhibit clinal trait variation along aridity gradients driven by strong selective pressures, yet whether plant-microbiome associations follow similar patterns remains unclear. Brachypodium spp., a model for temperate cereals spanning environments from hyper-arid to humid, provides an ideal system to test this hypothesis. Here, we compare rhizosphere bacterial communities of Brachypodium growing across arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid zones in Israel with those of ecotypes collected along the same precipitation gradient and grown under common-garden conditions. Rhizosphere bacterial diversity was highest in plants from mid-precipitation sites within the Mediterranean semi-arid transition zone, where annual precipitation decreases from 600 to 400 mm. Together with higher stochasticity and fewer significantly associated taxa in rhizosphere microbiomes from mid-precipitation plants suggest weaker plant-driven microbiome selection in this transition zone, a pattern that persisted under common-garden conditions. The results may represent a promising avenue to develop microbiome-based strategies for drought resilience by advancing our understanding of host filtering across aridity gradients.
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