Pathogen community assembly in a host population is associated with interannual variation in seasonal environmental conditions.
Grunberg RL, Halliday FW, O'Keeffe KR, Joyner BN, Mitchell CE
Phenology
The mix of fungal diseases hitting your lawn or meadow grasses each summer is largely shaped by that season's rainfall and humidity — meaning disease pressure isn't random bad luck but a pattern you can start to read from the weather.
Scientists watched which fungal diseases showed up on a type of grass (tall fescue, common in lawns and pastures) over three growing seasons. Each spring, the disease community looked similar, but as summer unfolded, the mix of diseases diverged depending on how wet or humid that year turned out to be. This means local weather — especially rainfall — is a key driver of which plant diseases you'll see in any given year.
Key Findings
Fungal pathogen communities on tall fescue started from a similar baseline each spring across all 3 years but diverged significantly as the growing season progressed.
Interannual differences in pathogen community composition were most strongly explained by precipitation and relative humidity, not by consistent year-to-year patterns.
Ordination analyses confirmed that environmental variation — not host plant differences — was the primary driver of which disease community assembled in a given year.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers tracked fungal diseases on tall fescue grass over three years and found that while pathogen communities start similarly each spring, they diverge across years depending on rainfall and humidity. Wetter or more humid years produce distinctly different disease communities than drier ones.
Abstract Preview
The seasonal timing of pathogen development, i.e. its phenology, may be determined by host or environmental cues and shape pathogen communities. Yet, it is less clear to what degree seasonal patter...
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Lolium arundinaceum, commonly known as tall fescue, is a cool-season, perennial C3 grass species native to Europe and introduced to North America and other parts of the world. It naturally occurs in grasslands and coastal marshes. Tall fescue is grown in a range of cultivars, widely used for live...