How Past Stress Helps Microbes Benefit Plants

People are exposing nature to stress, including pollution and drought. Many plants can survive these stressors because they live with helpful microbes that form communities on and inside plants. How well-microbial communities can help stressed plants depends on whether the microbes have experienced the stress before—which is called their stress legacies . For example, past drought (lack of rain) can favor drought-resistant microbes, which leads to more drought-resistant microbial communities. In turn, these microbial communities can better help plants under future drought stress. Thus, microbes that experienced particular stresses in the past can better help plants survive stress in the future. This means stress legacies of microbial communities matter for the health of our environment.