Proportions of nematode genera determined by both morphology and qPCR for field soil samples.

The percentage of each nematode genus present was estimated from three field soil samples using in each case one sub-sample for morphological identification and 3–7 sub-samples for qPCR-based analysis. The functional guild and their position on the coloniser-persister scale (1–5, shown as a suffix) are as previously assigned to each genus [22], [23]. The percentages are based on the number of nematodes observed (morphological analysis) or on all nematodes (>200) extracted from each 100 g sub-sample used to prepare template for qPCR. Anaplectus, Ceratoplectus and Rhabditella were not detected by either morphology or qPCR in these samples. Values for qPCR represent means ± sem.