Ecological drift and host filtering jointly structure foliar endophytes during ecosystem development
Caio César Pires de Paula, Petr Macek, Milan Varsadiya, Jakub Borovec, Mehmet A Balkan, Brett S Younginger, Daniel J Ballhorn, Tomáš Picek, Tomáš Hájek, Jan Frouz, Jiří Bárta, Dagmara Sirová · 2026
Read Ecological drift and host filtering jointly structure foliar endophytes during ecosystem development by Caio César Pires de Paula, Petr Macek, Milan Varsadiya, Jakub Borovec, Mehmet A Balkan, Brett S Younginger, Daniel J Ballhorn, Tomáš Picek, Tomáš Hájek, Jan Frouz, Jiří Bárta, Dagmara Sirová (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13321508.txt.
Description
Caio de Paula and co-authors studied the microbes that live inside leaves as young ecosystems grow in this 2026 paper. These tenants, called endophytes, can feed plants, harden them against stress, and block disease. The team sampled four plant hosts across sites of rising age, using site age as a stand-in for time.
Host identity shaped the microbe mix more than site age did, though fungi answered to age more than bacteria. Leaf chemistry and season also left marks. Much of the remaining pattern matched chance drift, where communities wander on their own. A few steady tenants dominated while many rare ones came and went. The mix suggests plants keep a flexible bench of helpers.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Caio César Pires de Paula, Petr Macek, Milan Varsadiya, Jakub Borovec, Mehmet A Balkan, Brett S Younginger, Daniel J Ballhorn, Tomáš Picek, Tomáš Hájek, Jan Frouz, Jiří Bárta, Dagmara Sirová |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 61 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |