Agua Salud Monoculture Plantations 2015 Raw sequence reads

We studied microbial communities in the bulk soil of five native species monoculture plantations in the Republic of Panama to assess how bacteria and fungi were affected by soil chemistry and plant identity after seven years of tree growth. Relative to the other species, Terminalia amazonia accumulated over three times the aboveground biomass and had lower mortality. Soil nutrients were low and we found no differences in soil chemistry across the five plantation types. Similarly, there was no difference in alpha diversity of the soil communities across plantation types and the soil bacterial communities showed no compositional variation or enrichment of any individual taxa. However, soil fungal communities differed in T. amazonia plantations as compared to the others, exhibiting enrichment or absence of specific taxa of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and pu-tative phytopathogens. Our results suggest that this tree species may associate with certain micro-bial taxa that help it to overcome low nutrient availability in these habitats. Consideration of plant-soil-microbe interactions in restoration efforts may facilitate tree growth and help to pro-mote climate resilient forested areas.