Historical land‐use changes shape present‐day biodiversity through legacy effects, but the duration and mechanisms of these legacies are poorly understood. We used historical land‐use maps in two Swedish landscapes across three centuries to examine the persistent influence of historical land use on plant and soil microbial communities. Overall, bacteria showed stronger legacy effects than fungi, but effects varied across funct...

Understanding the processes that underpin the community assembly of bacteria is a key challenge in microbial ecology. We studied soil bacterial communities across a large‐scale successional gradient of managed and abandoned grasslands paired with mature forest sites to disentangle drivers of community turnover and assembly. Diversity partitioning and phylogenetic null‐modelling showed that bacterial communities in grasslands r...

Background and aims Supporting arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) nutrient acquisition in crops may reduce the need for fertilizer inputs, leading to more cost effective and sustainable crop production. In wheat, AM fungal responsiveness and benefits of symbiosis vary among varieties. This study explored the role of soil compaction in this variation. Methods We examined in a field experiment how soil compaction affects AM fungal colo...

Biological control , or biocontrol , is the exploitation of living agents (incl. viruses) to combat pestilential organisms (incl. pathogens, pests, and weeds) for diverse purposes to provide human benefits. Thus, during the last century the practices and concepts involved have evolved in separate streams associated with distinct scientific and taxonomic disciplines. In parallel developments, there have been increasing referenc...

The significance of nematodes for disease development caused by other soil-borne pathogens has been demonstrated in many crops throughout the world and specifically prevalent are interactions between plant-parasitic nematodes and species of plant pathogenic fungi. Here, the interaction between the fungus Rhizoctonia solani (AG2) and the migratory endoparasitic root-lesion nematode Pratylenchus penetrans was investigated on pot...

Understanding the role that species interactions play in determining the rate and direction of ecosystem change due to nitrogen (N) eutrophication is important for predicting the consequences of global change. Insects might play a major role in this context. They consume substantial amounts of plant biomass and can alter competitive interactions among plants, indirectly shaping plant community composition. Nitrogen eutrophicat...

An important component of plant–soil feedbacks is how plant species identity and diversity influence soil organism communities. We examine the effects of grassland plant species growing alone and together up to a richness of 12 species on nematode diversity and feeding group composition, eight years after the establishment of experimental grassland plots at the BIODEPTH site in northern Sweden. This is a substantially longer t...