Plant diversity represents the prevalent determinant of soil fungal community structure across temperate grasslands in northern China

Abstract

Fungi play an important regulating role in terrestrial ecosystem functioning. However, their biogeographic distribution patterns along combined gradients of plant communities and environmental variables across regional spatial scales remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap is particularly pronounced in arid and semi-arid grassland ecosystems, which occupy one third of the terrestrial surface of China. Here, a regional-scale field investigation was conducted to collect soil samples from 290 plots at 52 sites along a 4000 km transect in temperate grasslands of northern China to assess the distribution patterns of fungal communities. The high-throughput Illumina sequencing revealed that so..