Metadata from: Rhizosphere bacteria and fungi are differentially structured by host plants, soil mineralogy and ectomycorrhizal communities in the Alaskan tundra

The rhizosphere contains a diverse group of bacteria and fungi living near plant roots whose composition and function are key drivers of ecosystem and biogeochemical processes. Despite rich literature on rhizosphere communities, surprisingly few studies have examined the drivers of rhizosphere community structures in natural settings. We collected 513 root samples from 141  individual plants representing six plant species and three mycorrhizal association types across four glacial drifts in the North Slope of Alaska. Glacial drifts ranged from 11,000 to 4.5 million years since deglaciation representing a gradient in glacial history and mineralogical weathering. We found that glacial history, a strong proxy for soil mineralogy, explained most of the captured variation in rhizosphere bacterial communities (13.3%) and ectomycorrhizal fungal communities (10.2%) while interactions between glacial history and host plants explained the most variation in fungal rhizosphere communities (11...., , , # Rhizosphere Bacteria and Fungi are Differentially Structured by Host Plants, Soil 1 Mineralogy and Ectomycorrhizal Communities in the Alaskan Tundra - Metadata

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gmsbcc2zt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gmsbcc2zt)

## Description of the data and file structure

Rhizosphere communities were obtained from six common tundra plants (*Betula nana, Eriophorum vaginatum, Salix Pulchra, Salix reticulata, Empetrum nigrum and Vaccinium uliginosum*) and mycorrhizal communities from *B. nana*. We washed 0.5 - 2 grams of plant roots in a 0.9% NaCl solution to obtain rhizosphere slurries, and performed DNA amplification using the bacterial primers 16S, and fungal primers ITS4. Metadata for sample collection is included as well as relevant data processing and analysis scripts as well as figure generation.

Raw reads are available on NCBI Sequence Read Archive: BioProject PRJNA1037070.

Sequencing data was cleaned using the dada2 pipeline and further analyzed using the R...,