Fig. 1: TwinWin field experiment and sampling design.

Graphical visualization of our hypotheses that (1) a plant diversity gradient influences soil biotic associations in the rhizosphere and that (2) such changes influence the “balance” between growth and respiration increasing microbial community CUE. Positive associations within the soil microbial community are shown in blue while negative associations are shown in red along the plant diversity gradient (a). Sampling design of Barley rhizosphere within the TwinWin field experiment. Number of field plot replicates sampled for each treatment and within plot replication. The number of rhizosphere samples collected within the same plot was adjusted to 6 or 8 (pseudo-replication) to yield twenty-four replicates for each specific treatment to allow the construction of association networks within each plant diversity treatment. For “Barley + 1” treatment, the sampling was focused on plots from four undersown species: M. sativa (AA), T. hybridum (AC), L. perenne (IR), and F. arundinacea (FA). The total number of rhizosphere soil samples collected was 168 (b). Figure 1a was created with BioRender.com released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.