Plant-driven changes in soil microbial communities influence seed germination through negative feedbacks

We used metagenomics to characterize shifts in fungal community composition in soils conditioned by seven grassland plant species. We then conducted a pairwise PSF experiment to determine whether seed germination was differentially impacted by conspecific versus heterospecific soils. To investigate whether changes in the abundance of certain fungal taxa were associated with multiple PSFs, we assigned taxonomy to soil fungi and identified putative pathogens that were significantly more abundant in soils conditioned by plant species that experienced negative or positive PSFs.