Bowen Lab
Northeastern University
Marine Science Center
430 Nahant Road
Nahant, MA
Plant Microbe interactions
The interactions between plants and their micro-organisms are thought to be important both for plant health and also for ecosystem function. However, there is a tremendous amount that we do not know regarding how different plant species, and particularly how different genotypes within the same species, interact with and alter the associated soil rhizosphere microbiome.
In collaboration with plant biologists and ecologists we are pursuing research in several different areas examining how plant microbe interactions facilitate success of invasive plants, how they might promote range expansions, how these interactions form and develop over the life cycle of the plant, and ultimately how these interactions feed back on the capacity to store carbon.
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Plant-soil feedbacks occurring in the rhizosphere, the region of soil immediately adjacent to plant roots, create microhabitats through physical structure and provide plant-specific organic substrates resulting in rhizosphere microbial communities that exhibit plant species specificity. These feedbacks are highly localized and they matter to all plants because positive and negative interactions with the rhizosphere microbial community play a critical role in plant fitness. Plant-soil feedbacks are thought to be particularly important to the success of introduced invasive plants due to escape from antagonists in their native range, initial inhibition of local pathogens, or the formation of new mutualisms in the new range.
Phragmites australis is a common invasive reed in North America that demonstrates high intraspecific genetic and genomic diversity. However, an understanding of the role plant-soil feedbacks play in the fitness of invasive plants is lacking, in particular, how intraspecific (genotype) variation in plant-soil feedbacks promotes or inhibits invasion. In collaboration with Laura Meyerson and others we recently published work showing that rhizospheres of native and invasive Phragmites have different microbial communities compared to native Phragmites.
Papers associated with this work:
Bowen, J. L., P. J. Kearns, J. E. K. Byrnes, S. Wigginton, W. J. Allen, M. Greenwood, K. Tran, J. Yu, J. T. Cronin, and L. A. Meyerson. 2017. Lineage overwhelms environmental conditions in in determining rhizosphere bacterial communities in a cosmopolitan invasive plant. Nature Communications 8: 433.