UPE Seminar | Peggy Schultz and James Bever, University of Kansas | Microbiome dynamics drives the diversity, structure and function of plant communities

Ecologists have historically viewed plant communities through the lens of competition. Resource partitioning has been the accepted explanation of coexistence of competing species, with logical extensions to community structure and the ecosystem benefits of diversity. While plants clearly compete for resources, the evidence for resource partitioning providing a general explanation for the maintenance of diversity of plant species is weak. My work has explored the importance of microbiome dynamics in structuring plant communities. This work started while I was a graduate student at Duke where I developed an experimental and theoretical approach to evaluate microbiome feedback on plant fitness. I will briefly present this framework and the early tests at Duke, and then review the accumulating evidence that microbiome feedbacks can explain patterns of native plant diversity, succession, and ecosystem benefits of diversity