Seasonal assembly of nectar microbial communities across angiosperm plant species: Assessing contributions of climate and plant traits

Plant-microbe associations are ubiquitous, but parsing contributions of dispersal, host filtering, competition, and temperature on microbial community composition is challenging. Floral nectar-inhabiting microbes, which can influence flowering plant health and pollination, offer a tractable system to disentangle community assembly processes. We inoculated a synthetic community of yeasts and bacteria into nectars of 31 plant species while excluding pollinators. We monitored weather and, after 24 hours, collected and cultured communities. We found a strong signature of plant species on resulting microbial abundance and community composition, in part explained by plant phylogeny and nectar peroxide content, but not floral morphology. Increasing temperature reduced microbial diversity, while higher minimum temperatures increased growth, suggesting complex ecological effects of temperature. Consistent nectar microbial communities within plant species could enable plant or pollinator adaptati..., Creating nectar microbiome inoculum
We selected five microbe species (Table S1) that are common, widely distributed representatives of nectar microbiomes in various plant species, including those in Northern California (Vannette 2020; Vannette et al. 2021): the yeasts Metschnikowia reukaufii and Aureobasidium pullulans, and the bacteria Neokomagataea thailandica, Acinetobacter pollinis, and Apilactobacillus micheneri. We created our microbial inoculum (Fig. 1A; Supporting Information: Inoculum preparation) as described in Cecala & Vannette (2024). The inoculum contained ~104 cells µL-1 of each species (5 x 104 total cells µL-1).
Floral bagging and inoculation
We conducted 11 rounds of floral inoculation on the University of California, Davis campus (38.540 °N, 121.756 °W) (USA: California: Yolo County) from 22 March to 29 June 2023. In the morning the day before inoculations, we bagged ~10 unopened flower buds on each of 5 to 8 species of flowering plants (Fig. S1) to prevent the tr..., , # Seasonal assembly of microbial communities across angiosperm plant species: Assessing contributions of climate and plant traits

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9q2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xsj3tx9q2)

This README file was generated on 2024-06-11 by Jacob M. Cecala.

# GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Seasonal assembly of microbial communities across angiosperm plant species: assessing contributions of climate and plant traits
2. Author Information
A. Principal Investigator Contact Information
Name: Jacob M. Cecala
Institution: University of California, Davis
Address: Davis, CA, USA
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

B. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information
Name: Leta L. Landucci
Institution: University of California, Davis
Address: Davis, CA, USA
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

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C. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information
Name: Rachel L. Vannette
Institution: University of...