Herbivore influence on post-fire California sage scrub plant and soil microbial assemblages

California sage scrub (CSS) is an endangered, shrub-dominated, southern California ecosystem type threatened by increasing fire frequencies and type conversion to non-native grasslands. For five years, we investigated the influence of herbivores on post-fire CSS succession by annually surveying plant assemblages in control (herbivores allowed access) and experimental (herbivore excluded) plots at the Bernard Field Station, in Claremont California, USA, following a fire in May 2017. We also explored if soil microbe abundances, fungi assemblage structure, and carbon and nitrogen concentrations differed among treatments. Molecular data available at GenBank under Bioproject PRJNA893696.