Fig. 3: Diversity of soil fungal communities in a lowland rain forest with respect to precipitation seasonality and in response to experimental drought.

Changes in total species richness and Shannon index of soil fungal communities in response to seasonality and 14 years of throughfall exclusion (~50%) in a tropical lowland rain forest in Amazonia. Green, wet season; brown, dry season; boxplots—filled, control; empty, treatment. Total richness (number of OTUs), upper left corner of panel; total number of OTUs in each treatment/season inside plotted boxes. Significant differences as determined by paired t-tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, corrected for multiple comparisons using the false discovery rate method are indicated by grey arrows; +p < 0.08 (marginally non-significant); *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Boxplots: centre line, median; empty square, mean value; box limits, 25th and 75th percentiles; whiskers, 1.5 times interquartile range; empty circles, outliers.