Mapping Microbial Diversity onto the Phylogeny of Associated Plant Species

Diverse microorganisms are associated with plants and affect the function of host plants. Yet their assemblage and the spatiotemporal patterns of diversity among closely related plants have remained largely unstudied across scales or from a phylogenetic perspective. Whether speciation or evolutionary or biogeographic divergence of host plants co-occur with divergence in microbial diversity and assemblage in plants and/or their habitats is an interesting question in macroevolution, worthy of investigation.

Plant systematists have been using phylogeny as a framework to understand evolution of morphological characters for decades and they have recently moved towards identifying ecological drivers (e.g., shift in climate niche or biogeographic ranges) of lineage diversification using similar approaches. Microbial diversity can be viewed as an ecological trait for study in systematics and evolution. Studies on such a topic will shed new light on the relationships and coevolution between plant diversity and their associated microbial diversity.

We invite authors to submit manuscripts on the following themes:

• Comparing microbial diversity and assemblage in plants and their habitats with a known phylogeny constructed in previous or current study;
• Examining how the phylogenetic distance of host species is related to the differences in diversity level and composition of microbes;
• Comparing microbial diversity and assemblage in allopatric sister species or clade to address the role of biogeography in shaping microbial diversity and species diversification;
• Examining pattern of microbial diversity and assemblage between different geographic regions from a phylogenetic perspective;
• Examining patterns and drivers of microbial diversity within a single plant species;
• Spatial and temporal patterns of microbial diversity across different scales.