Abstract
The phyllosphere, or leaf environment, is a temporally erratic, spatially heterogeneous, and inherently transient habitat that supports a large and diverse population of microorganisms. This chapter offers an introductory exploration of the leaf surface as a microbial biome and of the genes and gene functions that underlie the unique adaptations for epiphytic survival in this inhospitable milieu. Also reviewed are the various ways in which host plant and environmental conditions affect the assembly, structure, and function of microbial communities on plant foliage. Special emphasis is placed on the challenges of studying microbial life on leaf surfaces, on the impact of leaf-associated microbiota on the ecosystem services provided by plant leaves, and on the interactions of epiphytic microorganisms with their host, each other, and plant and human pathogens in the context of food security and food safety.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Brandl MT, Sundin GW (2013) Focus on food safety: human pathogens on plants. Phytopathology 103:304–305
Cooley MB, Chao D, Mandrell RE (2006) Escherichia coli O157: H7 survival and growth on lettuce is altered by the presence of epiphytic bacteria. J Food Prot 69:2329–2335
Delmotte N, Knief C, Chaffron S et al (2009) Community proteogenomics reveals insights into the physiology of phyllosphere bacteria. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106:16428–16433
Finkel OM, Burch AY, Elad T et al (2012) Distance-decay relationships partially determine diversity patterns of phyllosphere bacteria on Tamarix trees across the Sonoran desert. Appl Environ Microbiol 78:6187–6193
Gourion B, Francez-Charlot A, Vorholt JA (2008) PhyR is involved in the general stress response of Methylobacterium extorquens AM1. J Bacteriol 190:1027–1035
Innerebner G, Knief C, Vorholt JA (2011) Protection of Arabidopsis thaliana against leaf-pathogenic Pseudomonas syringae by Sphingomonas strains in a controlled model system. Appl Environ Microbiol 77:3202–3210
Kurkcuoglu S, Degenhardt J, Lensing J et al (2007) Identification of differentially expressed genes in Malus domestica after application of the non-pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens Bk3 to the phyllospere. J Exp Bot 58:733–741
Leveau JHJ (2006) Microbial communities in the phyllosphere. In: Riederer M, Mueller C (eds) Biology of the plant cuticle. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 334–367
Leveau JHJ, Lindow SE (2001) Appetite of an epiphyte: quantitative monitoring of bacterial sugar consumption in the phyllosphere. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 98:3446–3453
Maignien L, DeForce EA, Chafee ME et al (2014) Ecological succession and stochastic variation in the assembly of Arabidopsis thaliana phyllosphere communities. MBio 5:e00682–e00613
Meyer KM, Leveau JHJ (2012) Microbiology of the phyllosphere: a playground for testing ecological concepts. Oecologia 168:621–629
Perez-Velazquez J, Schlicht R, Dulla G et al (2012) Stochastic modeling of Pseudomonas syringae growth in the phyllosphere. Math Biosci 239:106–116
Rastogi G, Tech JJ, Coaker GL et al (2010) A PCR-based toolbox for the culture-independent quantification of total bacterial abundances in plant environments. J Microbiol Methods 83:127–132
Rastogi G, Sbodio A, Tech JJ et al (2012) Leaf microbiota in an agroecosystem: spatiotemporal variation in bacterial community composition on field-grown lettuce. ISME J 6:1812–1822
Rastogi G, Coaker GL, Leveau JHJ (2013) New insights into the structure and function of phyllosphere microbiota through high-throughput molecular approaches. FEMS Microbiol Lett 348:1–10
Remus-Emsermann MNP, Tecon R, Kowalchuk GA et al (2012) Variation in local carrying capacity and the individual fate of bacterial colonizers in the phyllosphere. ISME J 6:756–765
Scheublin TR, Deusch S, Moreno-Forero SK et al (2013) Transcriptional profiling of gram-positive Arthrobacter in the phyllosphere: induction of pollutant degradation genes by natural plant phenolic compounds. Environ Microbiol 16:2212–2225
van der Wal A, Tecon R, Kreft J-U et al (2013) Explaining bacterial dispersion on leaf surfaces with an individual-based model (PHYLLOSIM). PLoS One 8:e75633
Vorholt JA (2012) Microbial life in the phyllosphere. Nat Rev Microbiol 10:828–840
Yu XL, Lund SP, Scott RA et al (2013) Transcriptional responses of Pseudomonas syringae to growth in epiphytic versus apoplastic leaf sites. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110:E425–E434
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Leveau, J. (2015). Life of Microbes on Aerial Plant Parts. In: Lugtenberg, B. (eds) Principles of Plant-Microbe Interactions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08575-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08575-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08574-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08575-3
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)