Phyllosphere microbial communities are increasingly experiencing intense pulse disturbance events such as drought. It is currently unknown how phyllosphere communities respond to such disturbances and if they are able to recover. We explored the stability of phyllosphere communities over time, in response to drought stress, and under recovery from drought on temperate forage grasses. Compositional or functional changes were observed during the disturbance period and whether communities returned to non-stressed levels following recovery. Here, we found that phyllosphere community composition shifts as a result of simulated drought but does not fully recover after irrigation is resumed and that the degree of community response to drought is host species dependent. However, while community composition had changed, we found a high level of functional stability (resistance) over time and in the water deficit treatment. Ecological modeling enabled us to understand community assembly processes over a growing season and to determine if they were disrupted during a disturbance event. Phyllosphere community succession was characterized by a strong level of ecological drift, but drought disturbance resulted in variable selection, or, in other words, communities were diverging due to differences in selective pressures. This successional divergence of communities with drought was unique for each host species. Understanding phyllosphere responses to environmental stresses is important as climate change-induced stresses are expected to reduce crop productivity and phyllosphere functioning.
Importance: Leaf surface microbiomes have the potential to influence agricultural and ecosystem productivity. We assessed their stability by determining composition, functional resistance, and resilience. Resistance is the degree to which communities remain unchanged as a result of disturbance, and resilience is the ability of a community to recover to pre-disturbance conditions. By understanding the mechanisms of community assembly and how they relate to the resistance and resilience of microbial communities under common environmental stresses such as drought, we can better understand how communities will adapt to a changing environment and how we can promote healthy agricultural microbiomes. In this study, phyllosphere compositional stability was highly related to plant host species phylogeny and, to a lesser extent, known stress tolerances. Phyllosphere community assembly and stability are a result of complex interactions of ecological processes that are differentially imposed by host species.
Keywords: drought; microbial community assembly processes; pasture grass; phyllosphere; plant-microbe relationships; resilience.