Effects of Nutrient Supply, Herbivory, and Host Community on Fungal Endophyte Diversity, Kentucky, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, USA, 2014

The microbes contained within free-living organisms can alter host
growth, reproduction, and interactions with the environment. In turn,
processes occurring at larger scales determine the local biotic and
abiotic environment of each host that may affect the diversity and
composition of the microbiome community. Here, we examine variation in
the diversity and composition of the foliar fungal microbiome in the
grass host, Andropogon gerardii, across four mesic prairies in the
central USA. Composition of fungal endophyte communities differed
among sites and among individuals within a site, but was not
consistently affected by experimental manipulation of nutrient supply
to hosts (A. gerardii) or herbivore reduction via fencing. In
contrast, mean fungal diversity was similar among sites but was
limited by total plant biomass at the plot scale. Our work also
demonstrates distributed experiments motivated by ecological theory
are a powerful tool to unravel the multi-scale processes governing
microbial community composition and diversity.