1) Glacier Forefront 2) Fungi and Bacteria Community Targeted Locus (Loci)
Early community assembly of soil microbial communities is an essential process for pedogenesis and development of organic legacies. We examined fungal and bacterial succession along a well-established temperate glacier forefront chronosequence representing ~70 years of deglaciation to determine community assembly. As microbial communities may be heavily structured by establishing vegetation, we included non-vegetated soils as well as soils from underneath four plant species with differing mycorrhizal ecologies (Abies lasiocarpa, ectomycorrhizal; Luetkea pectinata, arbuscular mycorrhizal; Phyllodoce empetriformis, ericoid mycorrhizal; Saxifraga ferruginea, non-mycorrhizal). Our main objectives were to contrast fungal and bacterial successional dynamics and community assembly as well as to decouple the effects of plant establishment and time since deglaciation on microbial trajectories using high throughput sequencing.