Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. The prominence of pulse fire effects on plant‐microbe interactions has even greater import due to expected increases in fire disturbances resulting from anthropogenic climate change.įire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. While pulse fire effects on plant‐microbiome interactions are short‐term, they could have long‐term consequences for plant communities by establishing differential microbiome‐mediated priority effects during post‐disturbance succession. Interestingly, longer‐term fire ‘legacy’ effects had minor impacts on plant performance and were unrelated to soil microbiomes. On average, post‐fire soil microbiomes strongly reduced plant productivity compared to unburned or sterilized soils. Results revealed interactive ‘pulse’ effects between fire and the soil microbiome on plant performance. We conducted fully‐factorial experiments on each of 11 species from the Florida scrub ecosystem to test plant performance responses to soils with varying fire histories (36 soil sources), the presence/absence of a microbiome, and exposure to an experimental burn. Here we present the first factorial manipulation of both fire and soil microbiome presence to investigate their interactive effects on plant performance across a suite of plant species with varying life history traits. Interactions with soil microbes impact plant fitness, scaling up to influence plant populations and distributions. Fire plays a major role in structuring plant communities across the globe.
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