Supplemental Datasets Maize Leaf-Associated Microbes Vary Across Plant Ages

Background. The phyllosphere hosts a variety of microorganisms, including bacteria, that can play a positive or negative role in the success of the host plant. Bacterial communities in the phylloplane are influenced by both biotic and abiotic factors and develop over time into specific community compositions. We examined community structure changes in epiphytic leaf microbial samples from different plant leaf ages and determined key drivers of microbe community structure and development. Methods. A combination of ribosomal (ARISA) and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) direct imaging strategies were used to assess microbial community composition across maize plant ages, using a novel and powerful staggered planning design. This data object contains separate sections for each data type, with the raw data files, the intermediate files from analysis steps, and the output files listing microbial abundances at each stage. There is a metadata file for each datatype, listing specifics such as column headers. For ARISA, the raw data is the peak height of specific size classes of ribosomal intergenic spacer PCR products, which are then organized into a species-sample matrix and relative abundances output. For SEM images, microbes were traced manually (and the trace files included in this data object), then the sizes were binned to create a size-based operational taxonomic unit by sample matrix. The output is abundance of each binned taxonomic unit in each sample.

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Author Ann E. Stapleton
Last Updated September 10, 2026, 18:02 (UTC)
Published April 8, 2026, 06:58 (UTC)
Citation Ann E. Stapleton 2015. Supplemental Datasets Maize Leaf-Associated Microbes Vary Across Plant Ages. CyVerse Data Commons. DOI 10.7946/P2WC77
Publisher iPlant Collaborative Data Commons
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de_created_date 2015-11-03T23:53:44Z
de_modified_date 2020-02-20T22:05:33Z
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publisher CyVerse Data Commons
resourceType maize leaf microbes