Improving ecological restoration outcomes by incorporating soil microbiota

Western Australia's Kwongan ecoregion, a global biodiversity hotspot, faces ongoing pressures from historic land clearing for agriculture and habitat fragmentation. While efforts to restore above-ground habitats across the region are seeing increased focus, soil microbes and their interactions with the soil system and aboveground biota however are often neglected from restoration science and practice. We aim to assess changes in the soil microbiome following an ongoing restoration project in order to affect improved restoration practices that better incorporate soil microbiota. We will characterise environmental metagenomes from soil samples to assess differences in taxonomy and key functional genes associated with microbial mediated ecological functions across restored, degraded, and intact reference sites.