Living Air: How Plants Interact With Microbes in the Atmosphere

Описание: This article explores the phyllosphere—the microbial communities living on plant leaf surfaces—through a reframed lens that treats air as an active and integral component of plant microbiome assembly. Rather than viewing leaf-associated microbes as primarily derived from soil and filtered upward through the plant, the work argues that the atmosphere hosts a structured and dynamic microbial community (the aerobiome) that continuously exchanges microbes with leaf surfaces.
The review first establishes what is known about phyllosphere communities, including their core taxa, functional roles, and the strong selective pressures imposed by leaf microenvironments. It then identifies conceptual gaps in current research, particularly the dominance of soil-first assumptions, limited treatment of dispersal pathways, and reliance on snapshot sampling that obscures temporal dynamics.
By introducing the aerobiome as a defined microbial compartment, the article synthesizes evidence that airborne microbes contribute substantially to phyllosphere assembly through continuous deposition, while leaf surfaces simultaneously act as sources of microbial emission back into boundary-layer air. This bidirectional exchange supports an air–phyllosphere continuum rather than a one-way colonization model.
The framework has direct implications for plant health, including disease ecology, induced systemic resistance, and crop management—especially in controlled environments where ventilation and filtration unintentionally shape microbial exposure. The article concludes by outlining methodological challenges and proposing integrated, multi-compartment, time-resolved approaches to better capture microbial flow between air and leaves.
Overall, the piece positions air not as a passive medium, but as a first-class participant in plant–microbe interactions, offering a corrective perspective that unifies dispersal, ecology, and management within a dynamic systems framework.