Plant-soil feedback under drought: does history shape the future?

Abstract

Plant-soil feedback (PSF) is widely recognised as a driver of plant community composition, but understanding of its response to drought remains in its infancy. Here, we provide a conceptual framework for the role of drought in PSF, considering plant traits, drought severity, and historical precipitation over ecological and evolutionary timescales. Comparing experimental studies where plants and microbes do or do not share a drought history (through co-sourcing or conditioning), we hypothesise that plants and microbes with a shared drought history experience more positive PSF under subsequent drought. To reflect real-world responses to drought, future studies need to explicitly include plant-microbial co-occurrence and potential co-adaptation and consider the precipitation history experienced by both plants and microbes.

Keywords: climate change; drought; eco-evo mechanisms; microbial community composition; mycorrhiza; pathogens; plant traits; plant–soil feedback; soil microbes.