Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees - Experimental Data

Please refer to the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre at
https://doi.org/10.5285/f1d17e61-bb6c-47a9-a648-062c63ea7f16.
This data-set is the experimental data for the paper Liang et al. 2020 Nature Communications, entitled "Soil fungal networks maintain local dominance of ectomycorrhizal trees". It contains results on seedling
growth and survival for two hyphal exclusion experiments in a subtropical
forest. The data-set include four data files, entitled “Tree_Seedling_Survival.csv”,
“Tree_Seedling_Growth.csv”, “Tree_Seedling_Root_Colonization.csv”, and “In-growth_Core_Enviroment.csv”,
with metrics including survival status, height, total biomass and the biomass of
component plant parts, percentage root colonisation by mycorrhizas, for tree
seedlings of ten common species including five ectomycorrhizal (ECM) and five
arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) species, which were transplanted in the in-growth
cores with windows covering different sizes of nylon meshes (35
vs. 0.5 µm).

The aim of the experiments was to test the
prediction that differential access to root-associated fungal networks
regulates plant-soil feedbacks, and quantify how access to root-associated
fungal connections affects growth, fitness and pathogen loads of seedlings in
patches of subtropical forest dominated by adult trees that associate with
either ECM or AM fungi.