Plant identity, not warming, controls leaf fungal disease risk
Yang F, Pu X, Huo J, Li X, Nan Z
Climate Adaptation
If you garden with native alpine or rock-garden plants, this suggests the mix of species you plant matters more for disease pressure than next summer's weather, since each plant type hosts its own distinct community of leaf fungi regardless of warming or drought.
Scientists spent 11 years warming and changing rainfall on four alpine plants (a daisy-like forb, a grass, a legume, and a sedge) to see how it affected the fungi living on their leaves. Surprisingly, which plant species the fungi lived on mattered way more than the warming or rain changes. The forb consistently hosted more potentially disease-causing fungi than the others, and even under heavy climate stress that pattern barely budged.
Key Findings
Host plant identity explained 34.1% of fungal community variation, far outweighing effects from 11 years of warming (+2.0°C) and altered precipitation (-50% to +50%).
Putative pathogen proportions ranked by host plant: forb > grass > sedge > legume, and this ranking was stable across all climate treatments.
Warming increased fungal richness and restructured community composition only in the legume (Oxytropis kansuensis) and sedge (Kobresia humilis), while specific fungal genera like Aureobasidium, Cladosporium, Vishniacozyma, and Colletotrichum showed fine-scale shifts under climate manipulation.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A long-running climate experiment in an alpine meadow found that which plant species a fungus lives on matters far more than warming or rainfall changes in determining whether that fungus is a potential pathogen. This suggests that as climate change shifts which plants dominate alpine landscapes, that shift (not direct heat or drought stress on fungi) will drive future plant disease risk.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Host filtering overrides simulated climate change: plant species identity shapes phyllosphere fungal communities and putative pathogen proportions in an alpine meadow.
Phyllosphere fungal communities play critical ecological roles in plant fitness and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the influences of multifactorial climate change on foliar my...
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The Cyperaceae are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges. The family contains around 5,500 described species in about 90 genera, the largest with over 2,000 species being the "true sedges" or Carex.