The temporal and spatial dimensions of plant-soil feedbacks.

Feedbacks between plants and soil microbes form a keystone to terrestrial community and ecosystem dynamics. Recent advances in dissecting the spatial and temporal dynamics of plant-soil feedbacks have challenged longstanding assumptions of spatially well-mixed microbial communities and exceedingly fast microbial assembly dynamics relative to plant lifespans. Instead, plant-soil feedbacks emerge from interactions that are inherently mismatched in spatial and temporal scales, and explicitly considering these spatial and temporal dynamics is crucial to understanding the contribution of plant-soil feedbacks to foundational ecological patterns. I propose a synthetic spatiotemporal framework for future research that pairs experimental and modeling approaches grounded in mechanism to improve predictability and generalizability of plant-soil feedbacks.