DOI: 10.5061/dryad.6t1g1jx4v
title: Microbial responses to stress cryptically alter natural selection on plants

description: Microbial communities can rapidly respond to stress, meaning plants may
 encounter altered soil microbial communities in stressful environments.
 Stress may therefore affect plant natural selection not only directly, but
 also indirectly via changes to the microbial community. Because stress can
 cause lasting changes to microbial communities, microbes may also cause
 legacy effects on plant selection that persist even after the stress
 ceases. To explore microbial indirect and legacy effects, we grew plants
 in stressful (salt, herbicide, or herbivory) or non-stressful conditions
 with microbes that had experienced each of these environments in the
 previous generation. Microbial indirect effects generally counteracted the
 direct effects of stress on plant selection, thereby weakening the
 strength of stress as a selective agent. Microbial legacy effects altered
 plant selection in non-stressful environments, suggesting that
 stress-induced changes to microbes may continue to affect selection after
 stress is lifted. These results suggest that soil microbes may play a
 cryptic role in plant adaptation to stress, potentially reducing the
 strength of stress as a selective agent and altering the evolutionary
 trajectory of plant populations.
description: # Microbial responses to stress cryptically alter natural selection on
 plants For publication in New Phytologist (2024) Please contact Lana Bolin
 ([lanagbolin@gmail.com](mailto:lanagbolin@gmail.com)) with any questions
 related to this data repository. The authors ask that they be contacted
 before publishing work using the following datasets. When using the
 following dataset please cite the original paper as well as the data
 repository. This repository contains 1 data file. Please see the methods
 section of Bolin and Lau (submitted for review at New Phytologist, 2023)
 for more details on how the following data were collected and
 analyzed.Files contained within this repository: 1.
 Bolin_Lau_NewPhyt_data.csv This data file contains plant survival,
 biomass, flowering time,and specific leaf area measurements. ##Variables
 Pot.num: Unique identifier for each plant. Flowering.date: Date when the
 first flower as fully open. Empty cell = plant did not flower.
 ShootBiomass: Aboveground biomass in grams. Empty cell = plant did not
 produce biomass. DeadHarvest: x = plant was dead when experiment was
 harvested. Empty cell = 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 wastaken.
 "salt" = salt stress. "glyphosate" = herbicide stress.
 "herbivory" = herbivory stress. "control" = no stress.
 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. Empty cell = 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. Empty cell =
 leaflet biomass was not measured for this plant (leaflet biomass was only
 measured for certain treatments) Leaflet1.area: Area of the first of two
 collected leaflets in square centimeters.Empty cell = leaflet area was not
 measured for this plant (leaflet area was only measured for
 certaintreatments) Leaflet2.area: Area of the second of two collected
 leaflets in square centimeters.Empty cell = leaflet area was not measured
 for this plant (leaflet area was only measured for certain treatments)
 Leaflet.area.sum: Sum of "Leaflet1.area" and
 "Leaflet2.area".