Abstract Detail

Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Schneider, Adam [1], Fitzpatrick, Connor [2].

Unique bacterial assembly, composition, and interactions in a parasitic plant and its host.

How plant-associated microbiota are shaped by, and potentially contribute to, the unique ecology and heterotrophic life history of parasitic plants is relatively unknown. We will present evidence that the parasitic plant microbiome in naturalized populations of Orobanche hederae is derived but distinct from its host plant microbiota, exhibits increased homogenization between shoot and root tissues, and displays far fewer co-associations among individual bacterial members than those of its ivy host. Orobanche bacteria communities also exhibited significant compositional congruency with Hedera root bacteria across sites but not with bacteria in the surrounding soil, possibly indicating that parasite-host interactions are more important than parasite-soil interactions in community assembly. We see this study as a first step towards extending the growing insight into the assembly and function of the plant microbiome to include the ecologically unique but often overlooked guild of heterotrophic plants. To that end, we hope to rigorously follow up on these preliminary results, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Botany (https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erz572)

1 -
2 - University of North Carolina, Biology, Coker Hall , 120 South Road CB #3280, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

Keywords:
Hedera
Orobanche hederae
microbial ecology
parasitic plant
Orobanchaceae
parasite reduction syndrome
microbiome
network analysis
Biodiversity
holoparasite
microbiome assembly.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: SYMB2, Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions II
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Wednesday, July 29th, 2020
Time: 11:00 AM
Number: SYMB2005
Abstract ID:49
Candidate for Awards:None