GEMS trainee Mackenzie Caple collected soils from a related eco-evolutionary Core Project investigating how nitrogen enrichment causes the decline of rhizobium mutualist quality. The study addressed the research question: Does nitrogen directly cause this change, or are the effects indirect via changes in light availability or legume host abundance? Soil microbes from this experiment were inoculated onto eight species of individual plants to see whether changes in soil microbes affected different species similarly. Results showed that changes in microbial communities altered functional trait expression. Overall, plants had higher specific leaf area (SLA) when grown with microbes that had evolved in high-light environments. Higher SLA is generally considered an adaptive trait for higher light, indicating that broad microbial communities may evolve in ways that help plants acclimate to their environment. However, plant fitness did not differ between the different treatments.