Plants Play Stronger Effects on Soil Fungal than Bacterial Communities and Co-Occurrence Network Structures in a Subtropical Tree Diversity Experiment
Hui‐Yun Gan, Xingchun Li, Yonglong Wang, Peng‐Peng Lü, Niu‐Niu Ji, Hui Yao, Shan Li, Liang‐Dong Guo
Abstract
Increasing biodiversity loss profoundly affects community structure and ecosystem functioning. Therefore, revealing the mechanisms associated with community assembly and co-occurrence network structure of microbes along plant species diversity gradients is very important for understanding biodiversity maintenance and community stability in response to plant diversity loss. Here, we compared the differences in community assembly and potential drivers of the co-occurrence network structure of soil fungi and bacteria in a subtropical tree diversity experiment. In addition to soil and spatial distance, plants are more strongly predictive of the community and co-occurrence network structure of fungi than those of bacteria. The study highlighted that plants play more important roles in shaping community assembly and interactions of fungi than of bacteria in the subtropical tree diversity experiment.