Forcing a brown rot outcome links wood carbon fate to fungal but not bacterial dominance

The goal is to overcome the challenges of establishing fundamental relationships between fungi and wood carbon fates that are due to the inherent variability of microbial community assembly and the lack of brown rot outcomes in field wood-decay trials. We pre-inoculated small-diameter birch stem sections with a brown rot fungus, Fomitopsis betulina, and compared these to non-inoculated birch dominated by various white rot fungi.