Herbivore influence on post-fire California sage scrub plant and soil microbial assemblages

California sage scrub (CSS) is an endangered, shrub-dominated, southern California ecosystem type threatened by increasing fire frequencies and type conversion to non-native grasslands. For five years, we investigated the influence of herbivores on post-fire CSS succession by annually surveying plant assemblages in control (herbivores allowed access) and experimental (herbivore excluded) plots at the Bernard Field Station, in Claremont California, USA, following a fire in May 2017. We also explored if soil microbe abundances, fungi assemblage structure, and carbon and nitrogen concentrations differed among treatments. Molecular data available at GenBank under Bioproject PRJNA893696.

加州鼠尾草灌丛（California sage scrub, CSS）是一类濒危的、以灌木为优势类群的南加州生态系统，受火灾频次增加以及向非本土草地发生类型转换的威胁。本研究于2017年5月一场野火过后，在美国加利福尼亚州克莱尔蒙特的伯纳德野外站开展了为期五年的定位调查：通过每年对允许植食动物进入的对照样地与排除植食动物的实验样地的植物群落进行普查，探究植食动物对火灾后加州鼠尾草灌丛演替过程的影响。此外，本研究还分析了不同处理组间土壤微生物丰度、真菌群落结构以及碳氮浓度的差异。相关分子数据已提交至GenBank，收录于生物项目PRJNA893696。