LAUSR

Description Soil microbiota from stressful environments provide an avenue for climate resilience By pushing environments to new extremes and exposing organisms to unprecedented levels of stress, anthropogenic changes are threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services. The substantial diversity and long evolutionary history of microorganisms provide a well of biological innovation that has the potential to relieve stress and increase ecosystem resilience (1). On page 835 of this issue, Allsup et al. (2) report that soil microbes can relieve climatic stress and enhance tree survival when the microbes have previous experience with that stress (drought or excess heat or cold). They also show that inoculated microbes, including beneficial mycorrhizal fungi, were still detectable in tree roots 3 years after planting in nature. These results suggest that management of soil microbiota, especially during restorations, could provide a valuable strategy for increasing forest resilience to climate change.