Road disturbance shifts root fungal symbiont types and reduces the connectivity of plant-fungal co-occurrence networks in mountains

Roads are currently one of the most disruptive anthropogenic disturbances to mountain ecosystems worldwide. These disturbances can have a profound effect on roadside soil properties and vegetation, typically favouring fast-growing and ruderal species. However, their effect on plant-associated fungal communities and plant-fungal interactions remains largely unknown. In this study, we examined the changes in root-associated fungal communities as well as plant-fungal and fungal-fungal co-occurrence networks along mountain roads from four biogeographical regions. We found that roadsides consistently altered plant and fungal community composition, generally favouring arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and putative plant pathogens at the expense of ectomycorrhizal fungi. Moreover, roadsides consistently reduced the complexity of plant-fungal and fungal-fungal co-occurrence networks (with 66% to 95% and 40% to 94% reduction in total edge density, respectively), even though the richness of fungal com..., All sampling sites were located along mountain roads in four distinct and distant regions: Norway, Spain (Tenerife), Chile, and Argentina. The Norwegian sites were situated in a subarctic climate along three roads spanning elevations from 13 to 683 m a.s.l. (6-7 elevation points per road; 20 sites in total). Vegetation transitioned from birch forests with ericaceous understory at lower elevations to dwarf-shrub tundra at higher elevations. In Tenerife, sites were located along three paved roads from 24 to 2377 m a.s.l. (7-8 elevation points per road; 22 sites in total) on the southern slopes of the Teide volcano, where vegetation ranged from thermophilous scrubs at lower elevations to Canary pine forests and high mountain scrublands at higher elevations. Chilean sites were located along two paved roads from 378 to 1645 m a.s.l. (8 and 11 elevation points per road; 19 sites in total), with vegetation shifting from Mediterranean and temperate forests to resinous forests and scrublands at ..., , # Road disturbance shifts root fungal symbiont types and reduces the connectivity of plant-fungal co-occurrence networks in mountains

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrsk](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrsk)

## Description of the data and file structure

The R_code_Miren.txt is a text file containing examples of the code used in the paper.  Data_Miren.xlsx is an Excel file with three sheets containing the data from the study. The data were collected along mountain roads (at different elevations) in four distinct regions: Norway, Spain (Tenerife), Chile and Argentina. In each region, there were 2-3 mountain roads, each containing several sites. Within sites, there were 2 large plots, one located next to the road (R plot) and one away from the road (B plot). For each big plot, there were 2-5 subplots, which in the B plot had different distances from the road. The samples were collected during the peak of the growing season in 2017 for Norway, in 2019 for Tenerife, and in 2018-2...,