Fig. 5: Effects of litter quality and soil mineralogy on soil fungal communities and relationship to litter carbon (C) stabilisation and loss.

Relative abundance of fungal saprotrophs partitioned into specialist litter and generalist soil saprotrophs (a), Soil fungal community composition (b), relationship between soil saprotrophs and percentage of litter-derived C respired (c) and the efficiency of mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) formation (d). 4 samples were excluded due to a low number of sequence reads (1 sample from No Minerals: High Quality, Kaolinite: No Litter and 2 samples from Goethite: Low Quality treatments). In panel a, bars indicate data means (n = 5 independent samples) ± 1 standard error (displayed as error bars) (n = 4 for No Minerals: High Quality and Kaolinite: No Litter treatments. n = 3 for Goethite: Low Quality treatment). Raw data are overlaid on bar charts to show the underlying data distribution. In panel b fungal communities from the end of the 126 day incubation (T126) are presented using non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis conducted on a Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix demonstrating strong impacts of the litter (labelled and colour-coded spiders) and mineral (indicated by symbol shape) treatments. Statistics in panel c and d were derived from n = 5 independent samples (n = 4 for No Minerals: High Quality treatment. n = 3 for Goethite: Low Quality treatment). Solid lines represent two-sided pearson correlations at p < 0.05. P-values derived from correlations were not adjusted for multiple comparisons. The sample size ‘n’ represents samples taken from independent experimental units (soil incubations). Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Exact P-values are available in the corresponding Source Data file.