Achieving bio-protection in New Zealand ecosystems mesocosm fungal pathogen OTU table

We established 80 experimental ecosystems (mesocosms), manipulated
interactions between plants and soil biota in a fully factorial design.
Each mesocosm was grown in a 125 L pot (575 mm diameter), and comprised
one of 20 unique, eight-species plant communities varying orthogonally in
the proportion of exotic and woody shrub/tree species (0-100% and 0-63%,
respectively). These plants were taken from a pool of 20 exotic and 19
native/endemic New Zealand plant species. Soil biota were manipulated
using a modified plant-soil feedback approach, where each plant species
was grown in monoculture in 10 L pots containing field-collected soil for
9-10 months, allowing the conditioning of typical associated soil biota
for each of the plant species. We created ‘home’ soils by taking the
conditioned soil from each of the eight representative species in a
mesocosm and mixing it together to create a single inoculum. Each ‘home’
soil mixture was also used as an ‘away soil’ in a different mesocosm that
did not contain any of the representative plants in that inoculum. These
soils were intended to increase the relative biomass in inocula of
specialized and preferred interaction partners of the resident (or
non-resident) plant species. After approximately one year of growth, we
harvested all plants from each mesocosm, took root samples from each
individual plant (n=491), extracted DNA and sequenced the fungi in the
roots. Fungal sequences were paired and clustered into operational
taxonomic units (OTUs) at 97% similarity. We assigned functional
attributes to fungal OTUs using the FUNGUILD database and retained only
the taxa assigned as “probable” or “highly probable” plant pathogens.