Imposing primary colonisation success of wood-decomposing fungi in birch wood alters microbiome composition and carbon release rates

Fungi dominate the decomposition of deadwood, with white rot-type species removing more lignin than brown rot-type species to gain access to wood carbohydrates. These fungi often compete to colonise the same tree species, and globally, a small shift in the success of either rot type could have massive greenhouse gas implications. For this reason, we need to know what controls white vs brown rot outcomes, starting with field studies that track fungi and the fate of wood lignin under real-world conditions. Such experiments, however, have had skewed, white-rot-only outcomes and have lacked representation of bacteria that compete for wood sugars. To address this, we pre-inoculated small-diameter birch Betula papyrifera stem sections with a brown rot fungus Fomitopsis betulina and compared these to non-inoculated birch in a treatment design that had been dominated by white rot fungi in past field studies. This approach encouraged more brown rot, widening the range of wood phys..., , # Imposing primary colonisation success of wood-decomposing fungi in birch wood alters microbiome composition and carbon release rates

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.p8cz8wb3f](10.5061/dryad.p8cz8wb3f)

## Description of the data and file structure

Density loss of wood post-decay was measured and lignin-loss-to-density-loss (L:D) ratio was calculated. pH of decayed and non-decayed (i.e., sound) wood was measured. Wood sugars (glucose, xylose, galactose, arabinose, and mannose) were quantified. 

### Files and variables

#### File: sugars_dryad.csv

**Description:** The quantification of sugars in wood using high-performance liquid chromatography

##### Variables

* sample (ID of each sample)
* sugar (ID of sugar)
* adjusted_percent_polysacc (percentage of structural carbohydrates in a given sample, adjusted for density loss)
* soil (independent variable): whether or not the soil pads directly below each wood sample were sterilised in the autoclave at Gravity30, twice, with 48 h rest peri...,