Different effects of long-term grazing exclusion on soil fungi and bacteria at an alpine steppe on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

The responses of soil microbes to enclosure have long been one of hot issues in grassland ecology. Few studies, however, have discerned the responses of soil microbial community compositions, functional groups and co-occurrence networks in different growth stages to long-term grazing exclusion and evaluated the indicative ability of diversity and networks parameter to soil ecosystem functions experiencing long-term grazing exclusion. We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the responses of soil microbes to long-term grazing exclusion at the alpine steppe on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau