Abstract
Phyllosphere microbiomes are crucial for maintaining plant growth and health, but their responses to global change remain largely unclear. Based on a precipitation gradient and N addition experiment in a semiarid grassland on the Mongolian Plateau, this study explored phyllosphere microbial diversity and stability. Across the two host plant species (Artemisia frigida, Leymus chinensis), decreased precipitation altered phyllosphere microbial community composition only. Increased precipitation reduced bacterial diversity and affected bacterial and fungal community composition. However, N addition significantly decreased bacterial, fungal, and protistan diversity, altered their community composition, and weakened phyllosphere microbiome network complexity and stability in both host plant species, suggesting that N addition had a stronger influence on phyllosphere microbial communities than changing precipitation. Our findings of strong sensitivity of phyllosphere microbial diversity and stability to N enrichment provide mechanistic understanding of changes in phyllosphere microbiomes and consequent plant growth and productivity under future global change scenarios.
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Data availability
All raw sequencing data have been submitted to the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database under the accession numbers SRP473181 (16S rRNA, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP473181), SRP473188 (ITS, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP473188), and SRP473194 (18S rRNA, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP473194).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to give our thanks to Jiawei Hou, Xueke Wang, Xiaojing Yue, Haidao Wang, Xuedan Lei, Yali Li, and Chao Yang for their assistance in the field experimentation. We also wish to thank Chao Xiong and Bing Han for their help in laboratory work. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31830012) and Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (C2022201042).
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S.Q.W., L.M.Z., and C.C.Z. conceived and designed the study; L.J.K., J.Y.F., J.Y.R., J.S., Z.X.Z., and X.L.Q. conducted field sampling and experiments; C.C.Z., Q.Z., A.H.G., and B.M.Y. performed the lab experiments; C.C.Z. conducted data analyses; C.C.Z. and JYF interpreted the data; C.C.Z., S.Q.W., L.M.Z., and Y.F.Y. wrote the manuscript with input from all coauthors. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhai, C., Yang, Y., Kong, L. et al. Nitrogen deposition reduces grassland phyllosphere microbial diversity and network stability along a precipitation gradient. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03306-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03306-4
