Green infrastructure and atmospheric pollution shape diversity and composition of phyllosphere bacterial communities in an urban landscape

Abstract

The microbial habitat on leaf surfaces, also called the phyllosphere, is a selective environment for bacteria, harbouring specific phyllosphere bacterial communities (PBCs). These communities influence plant health, plant-community diversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services. Host plants in an urban environment accommodate different PBCs than those in non-urban environments, but previous studies did not address individual urban factors. In this study, the PBC composition and diversity of 55 London plane (Platanus x acerifolia) trees throughout an urban landscape (Antwerp, Belgium) were determined using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. An increasing proportion of green infrastructure in the surrounding of the trees, and subsequently decreasing proportion of anthropogenic land use, was linked with taxa loss, expressed in lower phyllosphere alpha diversity and higher abundances of typical phyllosphere bacteria such as Hymenobacter, Pseudomonas and Beijerinckia. Although air pollution exposure, as assessed by leaf magnetic analysis, did not link with alpha diversity, it correlated with shifts in PBC composition in form of turnover, an equilibrium of taxa gain and taxa loss. We found that both urban landscape composition and air pollution exposure – each in their own unique way – influence bacterial communities in the urban tree phyllosphere.