Pyric herbivory effects on soil diversity

Pyric herbivory—combining prescribed burning with targeted grazing—is increasingly used to restore open habitats and has proven effective in enhancing landscape- and plant-community diversity. However, its impacts on belowground biodiversity remain less understood.This project evaluates the mid-term effects of prescribed burns and targeted horse grazing on soil mesofauna, bacteria, and fungi in a grassland encroached by gorse (Ulex gallii Planch.). We established an experiment in two shrub-encroached grasslands (Site 1 and Site 2) in the western Pyrenees with three treatments: (1) no burning and no grazing (control), (2) burning only, and (3) burning followed by grazing. Soil properties and microbial (fungal and bacterial) diversity were measured immediately after the burns, and vegetation structure, soil properties, and soil diversity (fungi, bacteria, and mesofauna) were assessed again after two periods of targeted grazing, 18 months post-burn.The dataset includes species composition and environmental matrices for mesofauna, soil and vegetation variables, read counts for bacterial and fungal OTUs, and taxonomic lists for all detected OTUs. Complete fungal and bacterial sequences are available under BioProject PRJNA1261648 (“Pyric herbivory effects on soil microbial diversity”) in the NCBI database.Further details can be found in:San Emeterio L., Baquero E., Antón R., Jordana R., Múgica L., Sáez J., Virto I., Canals R.M. (2023). Pyric herbivory increases soil microbial diversity but has a site-dependent effect on soil mesofauna in the mid-term. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 356:108632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2023.108632