with

"This was a collaboration with a team at the University of Nottingham in England," Wagner said.

"We grew the plant in different microbial communities with different drought memories and then measured plants' performance to understand what was beneficial and what was not."

"One of the most interesting aspects we saw is that the microbial legacy effect was much stronger with plants that were native to those exact locales than plants that were from elsewhere and planted for agricultural reasons but weren't native."

They note that additional species will be needed to confirm the pattern, yet the early results suggest that native plants may align more strongly with local microbial histories.

"We think it has something to do with the co-evolutionary history of those plants, meaning that over very long periods, gamagrass has been living with these exact microbial communities, but corn has not," she said.