Bacterial canopy diversity on Magnolia grandiflora

The effect of rain on the phyllosphere community has not been extensively explored, especially in the context of spatial variation on the impact of rain throughout the tree canopy. We characterized the response of the phyllosphere bacterial community removed from leaf surfaces of the Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) to rain across different spatial locations of the canopy. We used targeted next-generation sequencing of the V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene to characterize bacterial composition. Our results show that rain did not influence phyllosphere bacterial diversity or compositional similarity whereas vertical position in the tree canopy and trunk proximity influenced both. While previous studies have shown rain may be important to the growth and abundance of certain taxa, we found little effect on the phyllosphere community in this context and instead canopy position exerts a stronger influence.