Soil microbial identity in home-field advantage for litter decomposition

We aimed to understand the effects of home-field advantage (HFA) for litter decomposition with the identity of soil microbial communities and conducted reciprocal translocation experiments of soil and litter between sites at high and low elevations in cool-temperate forests. Total genomic DNA was extracted from 0.2 g of fresh litter samples and 0.5 g of soil samples using the NucleoSpin Soil DNA kit. The PCR amplification of the fungal ITS2 region from the genomic DNA was performed using barcoded gITS7 and ITS4ngs primers on a thermal cycler. Bacterial communities were characterized by amplifying the fragments of V4 hypervariable region on the 16S rRNA gene using 515F and 806R primers on the thermal cycler.