Microbial Community Structure, Rather Than Diversity, Predicts Plant Yield Under Global Change

Under global change, terrestrial plants adjust their physiological metabolism alongside adaptive restructuring of rhizosphere microbial communities, yet the mechanistic links between plant phenotypic plasticity and microbial consortia remain unclear. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of 272 global-change experimental comparisons and found that, among all global change factors examined, nitrogen addition exerted the strongest effects on both plant yield and microbial community assembly. Plant adaptive responses were more strongly associated with shifts in microbial community structure than with changes in alpha diversity. Microbial community structure reorganization was associated with increased soil carbon availability, whereas higher local microbial beta diversity constrained the magnitude of structural change. Based on a reanalysis of published amplicon sequencing datasets, we found that more stable and complex microbial networks, enriched with Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, were associated with higher plant yield. These findings underscore plant-microbe co-adaptation under global change, highlighting microbial community structure as a key mediator linking soil environmental shifts to plant adaptive performance.