Rhizosphere microbial community composition shifts diurnally and in response to natural variation in host clock phenotype.

Plant-associated microbial assemblages are known to shift at time scales aligned with plant phenology, as influenced by the changes in plant-derived nutrient concentrations and abiotic conditions observed over a growing season. But these same factors can change dramatically in a sub-24-hour period, and it is poorly understood how such diel cycling may influence plant-associated microbiomes. Plants respond to the change from day to night via mechanisms collectively referred to as the internal "clock," and clock phenotypes are associated with shifts in rhizosphere exudates and other changes that we hypothesize could affect rhizosphere microbes. The mustard Boechera stricta has wild populations that contain multiple clock phenotypes of either a 21- or a 24-hour cycle. We grew plants of both phenotypes (two genotypes per phenotype) in incubators that simulated natural diel cycling or that maintained constant light and temperature. Under both cycling and constant conditions, the extracted DNA concentration and the composition of rhizosphere microbial assemblages differed between time points, with daytime DNA concentrations often triple what were observed at night and microbial community composition differing by, for instance, up to 17%. While we found that plants of different genotypes were associated with variation in rhizosphere assemblages, we did not see an effect on soil conditioned by a particular host plant circadian phenotype on subsequent generations of plants. Our results suggest that rhizosphere microbiomes are dynamic at sub-24-hour periods, and those dynamics are shaped by diel cycling in host plant phenotype. IMPORTANCE We find that the rhizosphere microbiome shifts in composition and extractable DNA concentration in sub-24-hour periods as influenced by the plant host's internal clock. These results suggest that host plant clock phenotypes could be an important determinant of variation in rhizosphere microbiomes.

Bacterial Diversity in Replicated Hydrogen Sulfide-Rich Streams.

Extreme environments typically require costly adaptations for survival, an attribute that often translates to an elevated influence of habitat conditions on biotic communities. Microbes, primarily bacteria, are successful colonizers of extreme environments worldwide, yet in many instances, the interplay between harsh conditions, dispersal, and microbial biogeography remains unclear. This lack of clarity is particularly true for habitats where extreme temperature is not the overarching stressor, highlighting a need for studies that focus on the role other primary stressors (e.g., toxicants) play in shaping biogeographic patterns. In this study, we leveraged a naturally paired stream system in southern Mexico to explore how elevated hydrogen sulfide (H2S) influences microbial diversity. We sequenced a portion of the 16S rRNA gene using bacterial primers for water sampled from three geographically proximate pairings of streams with high (> 20 µM) or low (~ 0 µM) H2S concentrations. After exploring bacterial diversity within and among sites, we compared our results to a previous study of macroinvertebrates and fish for the same sites. By spanning multiple organismal groups, we were able to illuminate how H2S may differentially affect biodiversity. The presence of elevated H2S had no effect on overall bacterial diversity (p = 0.21), a large effect on community composition (25.8% of variation explained, p < 0.0001), and variable influence depending upon the group-whether fish, macroinvertebrates, or bacteria-being considered. For bacterial diversity, we recovered nine abundant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that comprised a core H2S-rich stream microbiome in the region. Many H2S-associated OTUs were members of the Epsilonproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria, which both have been implicated in endosymbiotic relationships between sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and eukaryotes, suggesting the potential for symbioses that remain to be discovered in these habitats.