RESEARCH ARTICLE Plant Invasions Associated with Change in Root-Zone Microbial Community Structure and Diversity Richard R. Rodrigues1, Rosana P. Pineda2, Jacob N. Barney3, Erik T. Nilsen4, John E. Barrett4, Mark A. Williams1,2* 1 Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, 2 Department of Horticulture, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, 3 Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, 4 Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America *
[email protected] Abstract OPEN ACCESS The importance of plant-microbe associations for the invasion of plant species have not been Citation: Rodrigues RR, Pineda RP, Barney JN, Nilsen ET, Barrett JE, Williams MA (2015) Plant often tested under field conditions. The research sought to determine patterns of change in Invasions Associated with Change in Root-Zone microbial communities associated with the establishment of invasive plants with different tax- Microbial Community Structure and Diversity. PLoS onomic and phenetic traits. Three independent locations in Virginia, USA were selected. One ONE 10(10): e0141424. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0141424 site was invaded by a grass (Microstegium vimineum), another by a shrub (Rhamnus davur- ica), and the third by a tree (Ailanthus altissima). The native vegetation from these sites was Editor: Jian Liu, Shandong University, CHINA used as reference. 16S rRNA and ITS regions were sequenced to study root-zone bacterial Received: June 10, 2015 and fungal communities, respectively, in invaded and non-invaded samples and analyzed Accepted: October 8, 2015 using Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME).