Soil microbes influence the ecology and evolution of plant plasticity

Stress often induces plant trait plasticity, and microbial communities also alter plant traits. Therefore, it is unclear how much plasticity results from direct plant responses to stress versus indirect responses due to stress-induced changes to soil microbial communities.

To test how microbes and microbial community responses to stress affect the ecology and potentially the evolution of plant plasticity, I grew plants in four stress environments (salt, herbicide, herbivory, no stress) with microbes that had responded to these same environments or with sterile inoculant.

Plants delayed flowering under stress only in the presence of live microbial communities, and this plasticity was maladaptive. However, microbial communities responded to stress in ways that accelerated flowering across all environments. Microbes also affected the expression of genetic variation for plant flowering time and specific leaf area, as well as genetic variation for plasticity of both traits, and disrupted a positive genetic correlation for plasticity in response to herbicide and herbivory stress, suggesting that microbes may affect the pace of plant evolution.

Together, these results highlight an important role for soil microbes in plant plastic responses to stress and suggest that microbes may alter the evolution of plant plasticity.