New insight into the divergent responses of plants to warming in the context of root endophytic bacterial and fungal communities

PeerJ

article

Xiaoting Wei¹  Fengyan Jiang¹  Bing Han¹  Hui Zhang¹  Ding Huang¹  Xinqing Shao¹ 

[1] College of Grassland Science and Technology, China Agricultural University;Key Laboratory of Restoration Ecology of Cold Area in Qinghai province, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences;Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Adaptive Management on Alpine Grassland

关键词: Qinghai-Tibet Plateau;    Elevation gradient;    Climate warming;    Root endophytic community;    Kobresia pygmaea;    Elymus nutans;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.11340

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Plant adaptation under climate changes is critical to the maintenance of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function. Studying the response of the endophytic community to climate warming is a novel way to reveal the mechanism of host environmental adaptability because of the prominent role endophytes play in host nutrient acquisition and stress tolerance. However, host performance was generally neglected in previous relevant research, which limits our understanding of the relationships between the endophytic community and host responses to climate warming. The present study selected two plants with different responses to climate warming. Elymus nutans is more suitable for growing in warm environments at low altitude compared to Kobresia pygmaea. K. pygmaea and E. nutans were sampled along an altitude gradient in the natural grassland of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. Root endophytic bacterial and fungal communities were analyzed using high throughput sequencing. The results revealed that hosts growing in more suitable habitats held higher endophytic fungal diversity. Elevation and host identity significantly affected the composition of the root endophytic bacterial and fungal community. 16S rRNA functional prediction demonstrated that hosts that adapted to lower temperatures recruited endophytic communities with higher abundance of genes related to cold resistance. Hosts that were more suitable for warmer and drier environments recruited endophytes with higher abundance of genes associated with nutrient absorption and oxidation resistance. We associated changes in the endophytic community with hosts adaptability to climate warming and suggested a synchronism of endophytic communities and hosts in environmental adaptation.

【 授权许可】

CC BY