DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0000000cw
title: Data from: Soil microbes influence the ecology and evolution of plant plasticity

description: 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
 positive genetic correlation for plasticity in response to herbicide and
 herbivory stress, suggesting that microbes may affect the pace of plant
 evolution. Together, these results highlight an important role for soil
 microbes in plant plastic responses to stress and suggest that microbes
 may alter the evolution of plant plasticity.
description: # 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 ([lanagbolin@gmail.com](mailto:lanagbolin@gmail.com)) 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: Unique identifier for each plant. * Flowering.date: Date when the first flower was fully open. NA = plant did not flower. * ShootBiomass: Aboveground biomass in grams. * DeadHarvest: x = plant was dead when experiment was harvested. NA = plant was alive when experiment was harvested. * Mic.trt: Microbe history treatment describing the stress treatment applied to plants in the field from which live microbial inoculum was taken. “salt” = salt stress. “glyphosate” = herbicide stress. “herbivory” = herbivory stress. “control” = no stress. “sterile” = sterilized mixture of all inocula. * GH.trt: Stress treatment applied in the glasshouse. “SALT” = salt stress. “GLYPHOSATE” = herbicide stress. “HERBIVORY” = herbivory stress. “CONTROL” = no stress. * FieldPlot: Numbered name of the field plot from which live microbial inoculum. There are 3 field plots per microbe history (“Mic.trt”). * Replant: x = plant did not survive original transplant and so was replanted later. NA = plant survived original transplant. * Family: Numbered name of the full-sibling family that a seed belongs to. * Leaflet.biomass: Mass of the two middle leaflets on the third fully expanded leaf on the main stem in milligrams. * Leaflet1.area: Area of the first of two collected leaflets in square centimeters. * Leaflet2.area: Area of the second of two collected leaflets in square centimeters. * Leaflet.area.sum: Sum of “Leaflet1.area” and “Leaflet2.are”. ## Code/software * Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.Rmd This R script contains all of the code required to perform the analyses in the above manuscript. All analyses were done using R v. 4.4.0 * Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.html This .html document is an output file of the main 'Bolin_NewPhyt_2024_Plasticity.Rmd' analysis file.