Skip to main content

BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Microbiomes
Sec. Host and Microbe Associations
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frmbi.2024.1452476
This article is part of the Research Topic Microbial Ecosystems of Plant-based Agricultural Production Systems: Methods, Impacts, and Implications for Crop Improvement and Yield Enhancement View all articles

Translating Macroecological Models to Predict Microbial Establishment Probability in an Agricultural Inoculant Introduction

Provisionally accepted
Isaac M. Klimasmith Isaac M. Klimasmith 1,2*Bing Wang Bing Wang 3Sora Yu Sora Yu 3Yasuo Yoshikuni Yasuo Yoshikuni 2,3Angela Kent Angela Kent 1,2
  • 1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, United States
  • 2 Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, United States
  • 3 Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley Lab (DOE), Berkeley, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The use of potentially beneficial microorganisms in agriculture (microbial inoculants) has rapidly accelerated in recent years. For microbial inoculants to be effective as agricultural tools, these organisms must be able to survive and persist in novel environments while not destabilizing the resident community or spilling over into adjacent natural ecosystems. Despite the importance of propagule pressure to species introductions, few tools exist in microbial ecology to predict the outcomes of agricultural microbial introductions. Here, we adapt a macroecological propagule pressure model to a microbial scale and present an experimental approach for testing the role of propagule pressure in microbial inoculant introductions. We experimentally determined the riskrelease relationship for an IAA-expressing Pseudomonas simiae inoculant in a model monocot system. We then used this relationship to simulate establishment outcomes under a range of application frequencies (propagule number) and inoculant concentrations (propagule size). Our simulations show that repeated inoculant applications may increase establishment, even when increased inoculant concentration does not alter establishment probabilities. Applying ecological modeling approaches like those presented here to microbial inoculants may aid their sustainable use and provide a monitoring tool for microbial inoculants.

    Keywords: microbial inoculants1, invasion ecology2, propagule pressure3, agriculture4, modeling5

    Received: 21 Jun 2024; Accepted: 30 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Klimasmith, Wang, Yu, Yoshikuni and Kent. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Isaac M. Klimasmith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.