Fig. 3: Contrasting genetic diversity development during succession.
From: Functional diversity of soil microbial communities increases with ecosystem development
Genetic diversity of bacterial (n = 95) and fungal (n = 95) communities across the land abandonment gradient related to (a, b) C-cycling, (d, e) P-cycling and (g) N-cycling. Boxes are bounded by the interquartile range (25th and 75th percentiles) of data, with the middle line showing the median. The box whiskers extend from the median to indicate minimum and maximum values at 1.5x the interquartile range. Points indicate the full distribution of sample values including minimum and maximum data values. The dashed horizontal line indicates the median of the forest sites, with asterisks (*) denoting significant differences between paired grassland and forest sites based on mixed-effect linear models accounting for paired structure and spatial distance with the following significance levels: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Full test details are listed in Supplementary tables S11–S12. Estimated effect sizes for differences in C-cycling (c), P-cycling (f), and N-cycling (h) between paired grassland and forest sites for each grassland stage, while including pair and distance between pairs as random factors. The dashed vertical line indicates no difference compared to forest sites, with points indicating partial ω2 effect sizes ±95 confidence intervals. Data and code to reproduce this figure are available at: (https://zenodo.org/records/17176048).
