A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Predator-driven microbial feedback loops promote plant health
Authors: Li, Gen; Liu, Ting; Chuai, Huiyu; Ma, Huiping; Yang, Zihan; Xu, Yangchu; Li, Huixin; Shen, Qirong; Hu, Feng; Geisen, Stefan; Jousset, Alexandre; Wei, Zhong; Hogle, Shane
Publication year: 2026
Journal: Nature Communications
eISSN: 2041-1723
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70413-3
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70413-3
Top-down trophic interactions are major drivers of microbiome dynamics, yet their outcomes are difficult to predict and their consequences for pathogen control remain unclear. We combine synthetic bacterial communities of varying complexity with field studies and microcosm assays to test whether microbivorous nematodes reorganize microbiomes to suppress soilborne disease. Field studies show stronger nematode-microbe associations around healthy plants, and microcosm assays confirm that nematode presence produces stable suppression, whereas microbe-only communities collapse under pathogen invasion. Nematode predation depletes non-preferred bacterial taxa and enriches metabolically versatile taxa within Proteobacteria, increasing community-level antagonistic potential and promoting complementary resource-use interactions linked to pathogen inhibition, yielding suppression beyond individual or pairwise effects. A minimal four-component feedback loop linking a nematode predator, plant pathogens, and two plant-associated bacteria with complementary functions accounts for the emergent outcome. Together, these results reveal an animal-mediated pathway of microbiome assembly that enhances resistance to pathogen invasion and provide a trophically informed framework for designing stable, disease-suppressive microbiomes in agriculture.
Funding information in the publication:
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42577332 to G.L. and 32522068 to T.L.), National Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (BK20250195 to T.L.), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2024M761143 and 2025T180695 to G.L.), Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (GZC20251618 to G.L.), Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent (2025ZB654 to G.L.) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (KYQN2023048 to G.L.). A.J. was supported by the grant National Natural Science Foundation of China W2431030.