Soil microbes influence the ecology and evolution of plant plasticity

Stress often induces plant trait plasticity, and microbial communities also alter plant traits. Therefore, it is unclear how much plasticity results from direct plant responses to stress versus indirect responses due to stress-induced changes to soil microbial communities. To test how microbes and microbial community responses to stress affect the ecology and potentially the evolution of plant plasticity, I grew plants in four stress environments (salt, herbicide, herbivory, no stress) with microbes that had responded to these same environments or with sterile inoculant. Plants delayed flowering under stress only in the presence of live microbial communities, and this plasticity was maladaptive. However, microbial communities responded to stress in ways that accelerated flowering across all environments. Microbes also affected the expression of genetic variation for plant flowering time and specific leaf area, as well as a genetic variation for plasticity of both traits, and disrupted a..., , , # Soil microbes influence the ecology and evolution of plant plasticity

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000cw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000cw)

## Description of the data and file structure

Readme file for data associated with: Bolin, L.G. Soil microbes influence the ecology and evolution of plant plasticity

Please contact Lana Bolin ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])) with any questions related to this data repository.

When using the following dataset please cite the original paper as well as the data repository.

This repository contains 1 data file, the R script to analyze them, and an .html output file from knitr processing of the main 'Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.Rmd' analysis file.

**Files contained within this repository:**

1\. Chamae_plasticity_data.csv

2\. Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.Rmd

3\. Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.html

### Files and variables

#### File: Chamae\_plasticity\_data.csv

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* Pot.num...