PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Samuel Jacquiod
AU  - Ruben Puga-Freitas
AU  - Aymé Spor
AU  - Arnaud Mounier
AU  - Cécile Monard
AU  - Christophe Mougel
AU  - Laurent Philippot
AU  - Manuel Blouin
TI  - A core microbiota of the plant-earthworm interaction conserved across soils
AID  - 10.1101/571240
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 571240
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/14/571240.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/14/571240.full
AB  - Microorganisms participate in most crucial soil functions and services benefiting human activities, such as biogeochemical cycles, bioremediation and food production. Their activity happens essentially in hotspots created by major soil macroorganisms, like rhizosphere and cast shaped by plants and earthworms respectively1. While effects of individual macroorganism on soil microbes are documented, no studies attempted to decipher how the mosaic of microhabitats built by multiple macroorganisms and their interaction determine the structure of microbial communities. Here we show a joint shaping of soil bacterial communities by these two macroorganisms, with a prevalent role of plants over earthworms. In a controlled microcosm experiment with three contrasted soils and meticulous microhabitat sampling, we found that the simultaneous presence of barley and endogeic earthworms resulted in non-additive effects on cast and rhizosphere bacterial communities. Using a source-sink approach derived from the meta-community theory2,3, we found specific cast and rhizosphere core microbiota4,5 of the plant-eartworm interaction, detected in all soils only when both macroorganisms are present. We also evidenced a core network of the plant-earthworm interaction, with cosmopolitan OTUs correlated both in cast and rhizosphere of all soils. Our study provides a new framework to explore aboveground-belowground interactions through the prism of microbial communities. This multiple-macroorganisms shaping of bacterial communities also affects fungi and archaea, while being strongly influenced by soil type. Further functional investigations are needed to understand how these core microbiota and core network contribute to the modulation of plant adaptive response to local abiotic and biotic conditions.