Time will tell: The temporal and demographic contexts of plant–soil microbe interactions

Abstract

Soil microorganisms can have profound impacts on plant community dynamics and have received increasing attention in the context of plant–soil feedback. The effects of soil microbes on plant community dynamics are classically evaluated with a two-phase experimental design that consists of a conditioning phase, during which plants modify the soil microbial community, and a response phase, during which the biomass performance of plants is measured as their response to the soil modification. Predicting plant community-level outcomes based on these greenhouse experimental results implicitly assumes that plant–soil microbe interactions remain constant through time. However, a growing body of research points to a complex temporal trajectory of plant–soil microbe interactions, with microbial effects varying with the conditioning duration, plant development, and time since conditioning. Most previous studies also implicitly assume that measuring plant biomass performance alone adequately captures the most critical impacts soil microbes have on plant population dynamics, neglecting that soil microbes also govern other key demographic processes over the plant life cycle. Here, we discuss the relevance of these temporal and demographic dimensions of plant–soil microbe interactions when extrapolating experimental results and propose modeling frameworks that can incorporate the new empirical evidence. By integrating empirical and theoretical approaches, we provide a roadmap for more nuanced predictions of the long-term consequences of plant–soil microbe interactions in nature.