Abstract:

Background & Aim: Soil microbes inhabiting plant rhizospheres, known as the "second genome" of plants, play a pivotal role in shaping interspecific interactions, maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem functions and sustainable agriculture. Owing to the rapid development of molecular techniques such as high-throughput DNA sequencing, plant-rhizosphere microbe interactions have become a hot topic in ecology and have yielded substantial achievements in the past three decades. These achievements profoundly advanced our understandings of alien species invasion and biodiversity maintenance, and provided new avenues to improve agricultural productivity and crop quality. However, current research on plant-rhizosphere microbial interactions, specifically those encompassing multi-species coexistence and spatiotemporal dynamics, remains relatively scarce. 

Progresses: To improve our ability to predict how plant-rhizosphere interactions respond to insect herbivory, we synthesize current understanding on plant-rhizosphere microbe interaction mechanisms, spatiotemporal variation and the underlying environmental drivers, as well as responses of the mechanisms and their ecological effects of both entities and their interactions to insect herbivory, spanning from the individual to the community level. 

Perspectives: We outlined some key limitations in current plant-rhizosphere microbe interaction studies and proposed some future directions, aiming to promote the development of relevant studies.

Key words: plant-soil interaction, plant-soil feedback, temporal dynamics, spatial heterogeneity, insect herbivory, multi-factor interaction