Microbiota colonization leads to emergent plant phenotypes at elevated temperature.

Abiotic and biotic stresses lead to crop loss and dramatically reduced yield each year. To feed a growing global population in a warming climate, we must develop innovative agricultural methods to improve plant stress tolerance and crop yield. One emerging method to meet these goals is application of climate-selected microbial communities. Microbiota and plants are impacted individually by elevated temperature; however, we currently have little basic understanding of how microbiota influence plant performance in a warming climate. To address knowledge gaps in “temperature-microbiota-plant” interactions, my research simultaneously examines changes in microbial composition and plant performance at elevated temperature using Arabidopsis, tomato, synthetic and natural microbial communities. This approach has revealed emergent properties including altered microbiota abundance, novel root, biomass, and leaf surface phenotypes, and unique gene expression patterns that only occur in the presence of elevated temperature, microbiota colonization, and a plant. To predict these unexpected outcomes, my work uses these findings to improve current mathematical models and predict microbiome changes in crops at elevated temperature. This basic information alone will provide critical insight into plant-microbiota interactions in a warming climate and has the potential to reveal new principles of host-microbiota-environment interactions that could apply even beyond plant systems.