Bacterial and fungal growth on fungal necromass and its diverse components: shared profiles and divergent constraints revealed by high-throughput phenotyping

While fungal necromass is increasingly recognized as a major source of persistent carbon (C) in soils, the relative functional roles of bacteria and fungi in decomposing necromass are not fully resolved, and the processes that select for necromass decomposer communities from the broader soil microbial community are an emerging area of interest. In this study, we characterized the growth of 52 bacterial and 83 fungal strains isolated from necromass and soil on 22 C substrates, including different necromass phenotypes, fungal cell wall polymers, dimers, and monomers. We found that isolation habitat of the strains used in this experiment (necromass vs. soil) had no effect on the substrates they were able to use. Isolates from both microbial domains were able to grow on different labile carbon substrates, polymers, and necromass phenotypes. However, fungal growth was limited by necromass melanin content while bacterial growth was more limited by the abundance of cell wall polysaccharides. A..., , # Bacterial and fungal growth on fungal necromass and its diverse components: shared profiles and divergent constraints revealed by high-throughput phenotyping

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7zc](10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7zc)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset documents the substrate utilization of 52 bacterial and 83 fungal strains isolated from a pine forest plot at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve. The optical density of each strain on a given substrate was used to quantify total growth across 22 carbon substrates. Additionally this dataset includes files generated from 16S and ITS high throughput sequencing at the same forest plot from which the strains were isolated, including bacterial and fungal OTUs files and taxonomic assignments. 

### Files

`bact_norm.csv`: This file documents bacterial growth data, including strain name and taxonomic information, substrate names and groupings, isolation habitat of strains, and growth (as optical density) o...,