Comparison of microbial community recruitment by a model grass vs. a filamentous cyanobacterium

Biocrusts are microbial communities living on the soil surface across many low productivity ecosystems such as deserts. Biocrusts are thought to be similar in composition and structure to the soil communities that would have covered the land surface prior to colonization by higher organisms such as vascular plants. Biocrusts are often dominated by filamentous Cyanobacteria that are primary producers in these microbial communities and thus support various heterotrophic bacteria through the exchange of metabolites. Similarly, plants also recruit microbes by exuding metabolites from their roots that attract beneficial partners to form part of the rhizosphere. Since both plant roots and biocrust cyanobacteria produce metabolites that support the growth of other soil microbes we wanted to explore the specificity of microbial recruitment between grasses and cyanobacterial hosts.