Moss handpicks which soil microbes get to live inside it
Hu CJ, Asif M, Liu JH, Xing CG, Luo XQ
Soil Health
The moss carpeting shady rocks and logs on your hiking trail isn't just sitting there absorbing whatever's around it; it's actively screening and recruiting specific bacteria from the soil to help it survive, the same kind of selective partnership gardeners rely on when they inoculate soil with beneficial microbes.
Researchers looked at a moss called Pogonatum cirratum and compared the bacteria and viruses living in the soil around its roots versus those living inside the plant itself. They found the moss isn't just a passive host: it filters out and welcomes only about one in ten of the microbes from the surrounding soil, favoring ones that help with iron uptake and stress tolerance. The soil and the inside of the moss ended up hosting distinctly different communities of bacteria and viruses, showing the plant actively shapes its own microbial neighborhood.
Key Findings
Rhizosphere soil had higher microbial species richness and was co-dominated by three bacterial phyla, while the moss's internal tissue was dominated by Pseudomonadota (81.13%) but showed greater functional diversity
Source tracking showed only 10.57% of the moss's internal microbes originated from the surrounding soil, indicating strong host-driven filtering
Iron cycling accounted for about 14% of total metabolic potential in both the soil and internal moss communities, and viral communities differed in taxonomy and gene content between the two niches
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists found that a common moss carefully sorts which soil bacteria and viruses get to live inside its tissue versus its surrounding roots, picking out a select 10% of beneficial microbes from the soil to help it acquire nutrients and survive stress.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Niche-driven divergence of prokaryotic and viral communities in Pogonatum cirratum.
Ecological niche partitioning shapes microbial communities in terrestrial mosses, yet its underlying mechanisms and associated viral diversity remain poorly understood. Here, we characterized proka...
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