Plants rule, microbes drool: Evolution and response of biogeochemical cycles to global environmental change

Much analysis of ecosystem response to global environmental change has focused on the rapid response, generation time and evolutionary potential of microbial communities.  Here I argue that plants, due to their ability to access and manipulate a wide range of environmental conditions dominate ecosystem response to environmental change and that microbes can be viewed as dumb, black-box bioreactors in the dirt.