Fig. 7: Fungal functional diversity drives substrate degradation in grassland and forest soils.
From: Functional diversity of soil microbial communities increases with ecosystem development
a Effect sizes of substrate-induced respiration (SIR) rates between paired grassland and forest sites for managed, recently abandoned and late successional grasslands for a range of substrates of increasing complexity starting from glucose and ending with chitin. Points to the left of the dashed line indicate higher respiration rates in forests than in grasslands, whereas points to the right of the dashed line indicate higher grassland respiration rates than forest respiration rates. Points denote estimated effect sizes ± 95 % confidence intervals. Scatter plots showing the relationship between (b) fungal, and (c) bacterial genetic C-cycling diversity and the aggregate respiration rate of all substrates (MSIR). Solid lines indicate significant (two-tailed F-test, p < 0.05) fit of the regression line for each land-use type (grassland, forest). The dashed line in (b) shows the overall fit of all points independent of land-use type. Sample size n = 154 for plots (a–c). Data and code to reproduce this figure are available at: (https://zenodo.org/records/17176048).
