Root associated fungal communities from the Wageningen long term biodiversity-productivity experiment

Species-rich plant communities are more productive than species-poor plant communities but the reasons behind this relationship are currently unclear. We characterised the fungal communities associated with plant roots from the Wageningen biodiversity experiment to explore the effect of plant species identity, abundance and diversity on root associated fungal communities. Briefly, the Wageningen biodiversity experiment consisted of plant communities comprised of the following plant species: Agrostis capillaris L., Anthoxanthum odoratum L., Festuca rubra L., and Holcus lanatus L., Centaurea jacea L., Leucanthemum vulgare Lamk., Plantago lanceolata L., and Rumex acetosa,.These were grown either in monocultures or 2,4 or 8 plant species mixtures. 3cm diameter soil cores were taken from this experiment in 2010 and divided into two depth increments: (0-5, 20-35 cm). Roots from each depth were washed and their fungal communities characterised using 454 GS FLX pyrosequencing of amplicon libraries of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS1) region using primers ITS1F (Gardes & Bruns 1993) and ITS2 (White et al. 1990)