BACKGROUND: Grasslands provide fundamental ecosystem services that are supported by their plant diversity. However, the importance of plant taxonomic diversity for the diversity of other taxa in grasslands remains poorly understood. Here, we studied the associations between plant communities, soil chemistry and soil microbiome in a wooded meadow of Čertoryje (White Carpathians, Czech Republic), a European hotspot of plant species diversity. RESULTS: High plant diversity was associated with treeless grassland areas with high primary productivity and high contents of soil nitrogen and organic carbon. In contrast, low plant diversity occurred in grasslands near solitary trees and forest edges. Fungal communities differed between low-diversity and high-diversity grasslands more strongly than bacterial communities, while the difference in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) depended on their location in soil versus plant roots. Compared to grasslands with low plant diversity, high-diversity plant communities had a higher diversity of fungi including soil AMF, a different fungal and soil AMF community composition and higher bacterial and soil AMF biomass. Root AMF composition differed only slightly between grasslands with low and high plant diversity. Trees dominated the belowground plant community in low-diversity grasslands, which influenced microbial diversity and composition. CONCLUSIONS: The determinants of microbiome abundance and composition in grasslands are complex. Soil chemistry mainly influenced bacterial communities, while plant community type mainly affected fungal (including AMF) communities. Further studies on the functional roles of microbial communities are needed to understand plant-soil-microbe interactions and their involvement in grassland ecosystem services.

Department of Botany and Zoology Faculty of Science Masaryk University Kotlářská 2 61137 Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences Vídeňská 1083 14220 Prague 4 Czech Republic

Regional Office Protected Landscape Area Bílé Karpaty Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic Nádražní 318 763 26 Luhačovice Czech Republic

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Environ Microbiome. 2024 Jul 31;19(1):55. doi: 10.1186/s40793-024-00589-y. PubMed

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