Soil organisms have an important role in aboveground community dynamics and ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems. However, most studies have considered soil biota as a black box or focussed on specific groups, whereas little is known about entire soil networks. Here we show that during the course of nature restoration on abandoned arable land a compositional shift in soil biota, preceded by tightening of the belowground networks, corresponds with enhanced efficiency of carbon uptake. In mid- and long-term abandoned field soil, carbon uptake by fungi increases without an increase in fungal biomass or shift in bacterial-to-fungal ratio. The implication of our findings is that during nature restoration the efficiency of nutrient cycling and carbon uptake can increase by a shift in fungal composition and/or fungal activity. Therefore, we propose that relationships between soil food web structure and carbon cycling in soils need to be reconsidered.

Soil health, and the closely related terms of soil quality and fertility, is considered as one of the most important characteristics of soil ecosystems. The integrated approach to soil health assumes that soil is a living system and soil health results from the interaction between different processes and properties, with a strong effect on the activity of soil microbiota. All soils can be described using physical, chemical, and biological properties, but adaptation to environmental changes, driven by the processes of natural selection, are unique to the latter one. This mini review focuses on fungal biodiversity and its role in the health of managed soils as well as on the current methods used in soil mycobiome identification and utilization next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches. The authors separately focus on agriculture and horticulture as well as grassland and forest ecosystems. Moreover, this mini review describes the effect of land-use on the biodiversity and succession of fungi. In conclusion, the authors recommend a shift from cataloging fungal species in different soil ecosystems toward a more global analysis based on functions and interactions between organisms.

Plant-soil feedbacks are shaped by microbial legacies that plants leave in the soil. We tested the persistence of these legacies after subsequent colonization by the same or other plant species using 6 typical grassland plant species. Soil fungal legacies were detectable for months, but the current plant effect on fungi amplified in time. By contrast, in bacterial communities, legacies faded away rapidly and bacteria communities were influenced strongly by the current plant. However, both fungal and bacterial legacies were conserved inside the roots of the current plant species and their composition significantly correlated with plant growth. Hence, microbial soil legacies present at the time of plant establishment play a vital role in shaping plant growth even when these legacies have faded away in the soil due the growth of the current plant species. We conclude that soil microbiome legacies are reversible and versatile, but that they can create plant-soil feedbacks via altering the endophytic community acquired during early ontogeny.

Activities of rhizosphere microbes are key to the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. It is commonly believed that bacteria are the major consumers of root exudates and that the role of fungi in the rhizosphere is mostly limited to plant-associated taxa, such as mycorrhizal fungi, pathogens and endophytes, whereas less is known about the role of saprotrophs. In order to test the hypothesis that the role of saprotrophic fungi in rhizosphere processes increases with increased time after abandonment from agriculture, we determined the composition of fungi that are active in the rhizosphere along a chronosequence of ex-arable fields in the Netherlands. Intact soil cores were collected from nine fields that represent three stages of land abandonment and pulse labeled with 13CO2. The fungal contribution to metabolization of plant-derived carbon was evaluated using phospholipid analysis combined with stable isotope probing (SIP), whereas fungal diversity was analyzed using DNA-SIP combined with 454-sequencing. We show that in recently abandoned fields most of the root-derived 13C was taken up by bacteria but that in long-term abandoned fields most of the root-derived 13C was found in fungal biomass. Furthermore, the composition of the active functional fungal community changed from one composed of fast-growing and pathogenic fungal species to one consisting of beneficial and slower-growing fungal species, which may have essential consequences for the carbon flow through the soil food web and consequently nutrient cycling and plant succession.

Microbiomes of soils and plants are linked, but how this affects microbiomes of aboveground herbivorous insects is unknown. We first generated plant-conditioned soils in field plots, then reared leaf-feeding caterpillars on dandelion grown in these soils, and then assessed whether the microbiomes of the caterpillars were attributed to the conditioned soil microbiomes or the dandelion microbiome. Microbiomes of caterpillars kept on intact plants differed from those of caterpillars fed detached leaves collected from plants growing in the same soil. Microbiomes of caterpillars reared on detached leaves were relatively simple and resembled leaf microbiomes, while those of caterpillars from intact plants were more diverse and resembled soil microbiomes. Plant-mediated changes in soil microbiomes were not reflected in the phytobiome but were detected in caterpillar microbiomes, however, only when kept on intact plants. Our results imply that insect microbiomes depend on soil microbiomes, and that effects of plants on soil microbiomes can be transmitted to aboveground insects feeding later on other plants.