Root associated fungal communities from the Wageningen long term biodiversity-productivity experiment

Species-rich plant communitiesare more productive than species-poor plant communitiesbut the reasons behind this relationship are currently unclear. We characterised the fungal communities associated with plant roots from the Wageningen biodiversity experiment to explore the effect of plant species identity, abundance and diversity on root associated fungal communities. Briefly, the Wageningen biodiversity experiment consisted of plant communitiescomprised of the following plant species: Agrostis capillarisL., Anthoxanthum odoratumL., Festuca rubraL., and Holcus lanatusL., Centaurea jaceaL., Leucanthemum vulgareLamk., Plantagolanceolata L., and Rumex acetosa,.These were grown either in monoculturesor 2,4 or 8 plant species mixtures. 3cm diameter soil cores were taken from this experiment in 2010 and divided into two depth increments: (0-5, 20-35 cm). Roots from each depth were washed and their fungal communities characterised using 454 GS FLX pyrosequencingof ampliconlibraries of the internal transcribed spacer(ITS1) region using primers ITS1F (Gardes & Bruns 1993) and ITS2 (White et al. 1990)