Corrigendum to "The tiny drivers behind plant ecology and evolution".

Although species richness has been hypothesized to be highest at 'intermediate' levels of disturbance, empirical studies have demonstrated that the disturbance-diversity relationship can be either negative or positive depending on productivity On the other hand, hypothesized productivity diversity relationships can be positive, negative or unimodal, as confirmed by empirical studies. However, it has remained unclear under what conditions each pattern is realized, and there is little agreement about the mechanisms that generate these diverse patterns. In this study, I present a model that synthesizes these separately developed hypotheses and shows that the interactive effects of disturbance and productivity on the competitive outcome of multispecies dynamics can result in these diverse relationships of species richness to disturbance and productivity The predicted productivity diversity relationship is unimodal but the productivity level that maximizes species richness increases with increasing disturbance. Similarly, the predicted disturbance diversity relationship is unimodal but the peak moves to higher disturbance levels with increasing productivity Further, these patterns are well explained by the opposite effects of productivity and disturbance on competitive outcome that are suggested by the change in community composition along these two environmental gradients: higher productivity favours superior competitors while higher disturbance levels favour inferior competitors.

Preface

The nutrient absorption-transportation hypothesis: optimizing structural traits in absorptive roots.

Plant-associated microorganisms have been shown to critically affect host physiology and performance, suggesting that evolution and ecology of plants and animals can only be understood in a holobiont (host and its associated organisms) context. Host-associated microbial community structures are affected by abiotic and host factors, and increased attention is given to the role of the microbiome in interactions such as pathogen inhibition. However, little is known about how these factors act on the microbial community, and especially what role microbe–microbe interaction dynamics play. We have begun to address this knowledge gap for phyllosphere microbiomes of plants by simultaneously studying three major groups of Arabidopsis thaliana symbionts (bacteria, fungi and oomycetes) using a systems biology approach. We evaluated multiple potential factors of microbial community control: we sampled various wild A. thaliana populations at different times, performed field plantings with different host genotypes, and implemented successive host colonization experiments under lab conditions where abiotic factors, host genotype, and pathogen colonization was manipulated. Our results indicate that both abiotic factors and host genotype interact to affect plant colonization by all three groups of microbes. Considering microbe–microbe interactions, however, uncovered a network of interkingdom interactions with significant contributions to community structure. As in other scale-free networks, a small number of taxa, which we call microbial “hubs,” are strongly interconnected and have a severe effect on communities. By documenting these microbe–microbe interactions, we uncover an important mechanism explaining how abiotic factors and host genotypic signatures control microbial communities. In short, they act directly on “hub” microbes, which, via microbe–microbe interactions, transmit the effects to the microbial community. We analyzed two “hub” microbes (the obligate biotrophic oomycete pathogen Albugo and the basidiomycete yeast fungus Dioszegia) more closely. Albugo had strong effects on epiphytic and endophytic bacterial colonization. Specifically, alpha diversity decreased and beta diversity stabilized in the presence of Albugo infection, whereas they otherwise varied between plants. Dioszegia, on the other hand, provided evidence for direct hub interaction with phyllosphere bacteria. The identification of microbial “hubs” and their importance in phyllosphere microbiome structuring has crucial implications for plant–pathogen and microbe–microbe research and opens new entry points for ecosystem management and future targeted biocontrol. The revelation that effects can cascade through communities via “hub” microbes is important to understand community structure perturbations in parallel fields including human microbiomes and bioprocesses. In particular, parallels to human microbiome “keystone” pathogens and microbes open new avenues of interdisciplinary research that promise to better our understanding of functions of host-associated microbiomes.

Here we consider how extreme events, particularly climatic and biotic, affect the physiology, development, ecology and evolution of organisms, focusing on plants. The marked effects on organisms are of increasing interest for ecological prediction, given the natural and anthropogenic changes in spectra of extreme events being induced by global change. Yet there is currently a paucity of knowledge or even a common world-view of how extreme events shape individuals, communities and ecosystems. We propose that extreme events need be defined in terms of organismal responses of acclimation and of de-acclimation or hysteresis. From this definition we proceed to develop a number of hypotheses, including that fitness effects of extreme events occur primarily during recovery. We review evidence that, on the evolutionary time scale, selection is virtually absent except during extreme events; these drive strong directional selection, even to trait fixation and speciation. We describe a number of new tools, both conceptual and technological, that are now at hand or that merit rapid development. Contents I. Introduction 22 II. Moving to an organismally based definition of extreme events 22 III. Features to discern in extreme events 26 IV. Additional challenges in the study of extreme events 27 V. Evolutionary dimensions 29 VI. The mandate for new conceptual tools for ecological and evolutionary prediction 34 VII. Tools in hand, and tools needed, to study extreme events 35 VIII. Conclusions 37 Acknowledgements 37 References 38.

<i>Ecology and Evolution of Plant Reproduction.</i>Robert Wyatt

Somatic mutations can have important effects on the life history, ecology, and evolution of plants, but the rate at which they accumulate is poorly understood and difficult to measure directly. Here, we develop a method to measure somatic mutations in individual plants and use it to estimate the somatic mutation rate in a large, long-lived, phenotypically mosaic Eucalyptus melliodora tree. Despite being 100 times larger than Arabidopsis, this tree has a per-generation mutation rate only ten times greater, which suggests that this species may have evolved mechanisms to reduce the mutation rate per unit of growth. This adds to a growing body of evidence that illuminates the correlated evolutionary shifts in mutation rate and life history in plants.

Figure 3 from: Pansarin ER (2024) Rediscovery and revalidation of the Brazilian endemic Vanilla schwackeana Hoehne (Orchidaceae): its distribution and phylogenetic position. Plant Ecology and Evolution 157(1): 32-41. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.110331

Figure 8 from: Bochorny T, Gonella PM, Gonçalves LN, Völtz RR, Goldenberg R (2025) Five new species of Huberia (Melastomataceae) from the eastern Brazilian mountains. Plant Ecology and Evolution 158(1): 23-42. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.134375

Figure 3 from: Hong-Wa C, Besnard G (2026) How does a plant species swarm maintain coexistence on an isolated mountain in northern Madagascar? Plant Ecology and Evolution 159(1): 45-63. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.164557

Figure 2 from: Wise M, Sahli H (2024) A field investigation into potential reproductive and resistance advantages of purple-petalled plants in polymorphic populations of horsenettle (Solanum carolinense). Plant Ecology and Evolution 157(3): 358-374. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.128527

Poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa is proportionally dependent on soil management. Low crop productivity has been linked to hunger and poverty as soil degradation is undeniably the cause. This chapter gives a general overview from major findings on how microbes could improve phosphate (P) levels in soils by enhancing its solubility. A cross-sectional study was under taken to highlight the role played by phosphate-solubilizing microbes—arbuscular mycorhizal fungi (AMF) and phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) in improving phosphate solubility. About 30–50% of phosphorus is organic which the plants could readily assimilate, while 50–70% is inorganic and inaccessible to plants. There are several mechanisms the plants utilize to optimize nutrient uptake from the root hairs to various parts of the plant to maximize crop production. The utilization of readily available minerals such as phosphate rock is known to play vital role in plant ecology and evolution, in checking drought stress, heavy metal toxicity, nutritional imbalances, plant pathogens, and salinity. Therefore, soil improvement using rock phosphate could potentially act in synergy with the phosphate-solubilizing microbes to boost phosphate levels in the soil. This could be a welcome development in low-income economies in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to boost yield for profit maximization.

Supplementary file 1 from: Hess MC, Gómez-Ruiz PA, Morellato LPC, Buisson E (2022) Phenological patterns of herbaceous Mediterranean plant communities in spring: is there a difference between native and formerly-cultivated grasslands? Plant Ecology and Evolution 155(2): 207-220. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.86335

Figure 1 from: Wise M, Sahli H (2024) A field investigation into potential reproductive and resistance advantages of purple-petalled plants in polymorphic populations of horsenettle (Solanum carolinense). Plant Ecology and Evolution 157(3): 358-374. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.128527

Supplementary file 6 from: Nsenga Nkulu S, Meerts P, Ilunga wa Ilunga E, Ngoy Shutcha M, Bauman D (2022) Medicinal Vitex species (Lamiaceae) occupy different niches in Haut-Katanga tropical dry woodlands. Plant Ecology and Evolution 155(2): 236-247. https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.89394