Plants are intimately connected to the microbiomes they host. These microbial communities provide plants with nutrients. and protection from environmental stress. While scientists know that plant-derived factors shape the composition of microbiomes. it’s unclear whether host evolution also plays a role. To find out, researchers recently investigated seeds of the genus Oryza, the common rice plant. They examined the effects of speciation and domestication of rice on seed microbiomes. and found that speciation gave rise to distinct communities of bacteria and fungi in seeds. Similarly, domestication tended to produce variations in the composition of fungal communities while conserving bacterial communities. These findings indicate that while evolutionary processes can affect microbiome composition in random fashion. the environmental changes that accompany domestication contribute to the assembly of microbiomes in deterministic ways. Though limited to the species of rice the team examined, the results offer new insights into the interactions between plants and their microbiomes.