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Dryad

Mutualism mediates legume response to microbial climate legacies

Abstract

Climate change is altering both soil microbial communities and the ecological context of plant-microbe interactions. Predicting how soil microbes modulate plant resilience to climate change is critical to mitigating the negative effects of climate change on ecosystems and agriculture. Previously, it was demonstrated that heat, drought, and their legacies altered soil microbiomes and potential plant symbionts. In this study, we conducted growth chamber experiments to isolate the microbially-mediated indirect effects of heat and drought on plant performance and symbiosis. In the first experiment, we found that drought and drought-treated microbes, along with their interaction, significantly decreased the biomass of Medicago lupulina plants compared to well-watered microbiomes and conditions. In a second experiment, we then tested how the addition of a well-known microbial mutualist, the rhizobium Sinorhizobium meliloti, affected climate-treated microbiomes’ impact on the M. lupulina. We found that drought-adapted microbiomes negatively impacted legume performance by increasing mortality and reducing leaf number early in life, but that adding rhizobia erased climate treatment effects. Drought can negatively affect legume performance through microbial legacy effects alone, but the addition of rhizobia buffers legumes against climate-mediated variation in the microbiome. In contrast, heat-adapted microbiomes did not differ significantly from control microbiomes in their effects on a legume.