César Marín, Nancy Collins Johnson

Plants and their microbiomes are complex adaptive systems consisting of host plants and a dynamic network of associated microorganisms inside and around plant tissues. This article introduces Functional Team Selection (FTS) as a framework to help envision and study the movement of matter, energy, and information within plant-microbiome systems. FTS embraces the fact that belowground, plants are surrounded by trillions of soil organisms that may help or hinder the function of roots to provide essential resources for photosynthetic production. We describe how limited resources and antagonistic biotic interactions drive host-mediated microbiome engineering and how the function of belowground microbiomes can be selected -even during the host’s lifespan- to generate plant adaptation in stressful but not benign environments. The FTS framework provides guidelines for how to work with, rather than against, evolutionary and ecological forces to generate durable cooperation and mutualism in plants and their microbiome.