2025-04-292025-04-292024-09-24Gallego Tevar, B., Gil Martínez, M., Perea, A., Pérez Ramos, I.M. y Gómez Aparicio, L. (2024). Interactive Effects of Climate Change and Pathogens on Plant Performance: A Global Meta-Analysis. Global Change Biology, 30 (10), e17535. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17535.1354-10131365-2486https://hdl.handle.net/11441/172242Plant health is increasingly threatened by abiotic and biotic stressors linked to anthropogenic global change. These stressors arefrequently studied in isolation. However, they might have non-additive (antagonistic or synergistic) interactive effects that affectplant communities in unexpected ways. We conducted a global meta-analysis to summarize existing evidence on the joint effectsof climate change (drought and warming) and biotic attack (pathogens) on plant performance. We also investigated the effectof drought and warming on pathogen performance, as this information is crucial for a mechanistic interpretation of potentialindirect effects of climate change on plant performance mediated by pathogens. The final databases included 1230 pairwisecases extracted from 117 recently published scientific articles (from 2006) on a global scale. We found that the combined negativeeffects of drought and pathogens on plant growth were lower than expected based on their main effects, supporting the exist-ence of antagonistic interactions. Thus, the larger the magnitude of the drought, the lower the pathogen capacity to limit plantgrowth. On the other hand, the combination of warming and pathogens caused larger plant damage than expected, supportingthe existence of synergistic interactions. Our results on the effects of drought and warming on pathogens revealed a limitation oftheir growth rates and abundance in vitro but an improvement under natural conditions, where multiple factors operate acrossthe microbiome. Further research on the impact of climate change on traits explicitly defining the infective ability of pathogenswould enhance the assessment of its indirect effects on plants. The evaluated plant and pathogen responses were conditionedby the intensity of drought or warming and by moderator categorical variables defining the pathosystems. Overall, our findingsreveal the need to incorporate the joint effect of climatic and biotic components of global change into predictive models of plantperformance to identify non-additive interactions.application/pdf15 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/AdditivityAntagonismDroughtInteractive effect sizesPlant diseaseSynergismWarminginfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess10.1111/gcb.17535