The functional and structural succession of mesic-grassland soil microbiomes beneath decomposing large herbivore carcasses

This study characterised the functional and structural succession of soil microbiomes beneath wildebeest carcasses in a mesic grassland over eighteen months. The objectives of the study included comparisons of the overall metabolism and substrate utilisation succession at different postmortem intervals, together with 16S rRNA gene sequencing, to characterise the bacterial community differences and changes over time.