16S amplicons of soil and necromass-associated bacterial communities in Indiana Forests, USA

Fungal mycelium is increasingly recognized as a central component of soil biogeochemical cycling, yet our current understanding of the ecological controls on fungal necromass decomposition is limited to single sites and vegetation types. By deploying common fungal necromass substrates in a temperate oak savannah and hardwood forest in the midwestern USA, we assessed the generality of the rate at which high- and low-quality fungal necromass decomposes and how the decomposer necrobiome varies both across and within sites under different vegetation types dominated by either arbuscular mycorrhizal or ectomycorrhizal plants.