ArticleAnnals of botany2014
Contribution of above- and below-ground plant traits to the structure and function of grassland soil microbial communities.
Article in Annals of botany, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed.
- High phylogenetic turnover magnifies evolutionary relatedness along bacterial primary succession.Ecology · 2026Article
- Mechanisms underlying the effects of alpine wetland vegetation succession on the community assembly and functional potential ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Adaptive Strategies Mediating the Diversification of Alpine Plants: The Case of the Himalayan Blue Poppy (Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Rooting for function: community-level fine-root traits relate to many ecosystem functions.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Disentangling Drivers of Soil Bacterial and Fungal Diversity on Tropical Islands.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Relative Contributions of Soil and Litter Properties to Soil Microbial Community Variations During the Restoration of Larch Plantations to Mixed Forests.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Deciphering Soil Microbial Dynamics in Northeastern American Grasslands with Goldenrods (Solidago sp.).Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Article
- Invasive plants and their root traits are linked to the homogenization of soil microbial communities across the United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Shifts in Structure and Assembly Processes of Root Endophytic Community Caused by Climate Warming and Precipitation Increase in Alpine Grassland.Microorganisms · 2024Article
- Effects of grassland degradation on soil ecological stoichiometry and soil microbial community on the South of the Greater Khingan Mountains.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Ecological drivers of fine-scale distribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in a semiarid Mediterranean scrubland.Annals of botany · 2023Article
- Microbial network structure, not plant and microbial community diversity, regulates multifunctionality under increased precipitation in a cold steppe.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Close coupling of plant functional types with soil microbial community composition drives soil carbon and nutrient cycling in tundra heath.Plant and soil · 2023Article
- Assembly of root-associated N2O-reducing communities of annual crops is governed by selection for nosZ clade I over clade II.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2022Article
- Fungal Community Composition as Affected by Litter Chemistry and Weather during Four Years of Litter Decomposition in Rainshadow Coastal Douglas-Fir Forests.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Article
- Climatic and soil factors explain the two-dimensional spectrum of global plant trait variation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Resistance and Not Plant Fruit Traits Determine Root-Associated Bacterial Community Composition along a Domestication Gradient in Tomato.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsAbiotic properties of soil are known to be major drivers of the microbial community within it. Our understanding of how soil microbial properties are related to the functional structure and diversity of plant communities, however, is limited and largely restricted to above-ground plant traits, with the role of below-ground traits being poorly understood. This study investigated the relative contributions of soil abiotic properties and plant traits, both above-ground and below-ground, to variations in microbial processes involved in grassland nitrogen turnover.
methodsIn mountain grasslands distributed across three European sites, a correlative approach was used to examine the role of a large range of plant functional traits and soil abiotic factors on microbial variables, including gene abundance of nitrifiers and denitrifiers and their potential activities. KEY
resultsDirect effects of soil abiotic parameters were found to have the most significant influence on the microbial groups investigated. Indirect pathways via plant functional traits contributed substantially to explaining the relative abundance of fungi and bacteria and gene abundances of the investigated microbial communities, while they explained little of the variance in microbial activities. Gene abundances of nitrifiers and denitrifiers were most strongly related to below-ground plant traits, suggesting that they were the most relevant traits for explaining variation in community structure and abundances of soil microbes involved in nitrification and denitrification.
conclusionsThe results suggest that consideration of plant traits, and especially below-ground traits, increases our ability to describe variation in the abundances and the functional characteristics of microbial communities in grassland soils.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.