Browsing by Author "Weijters, Maaike"

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    Initial soil community drives heathland fungal community trajectory over multiple years through altered plant-soil interactions
    (Wiley, 2019-09-30) Radujković, Dajana; van Diggelen, Rudy; Weijters, Maaike; Harris, Jim A.; Pawlett, Mark; Verbruggen, Erik; Bobbink, Roland; Vicca, Sara
    •Dispersal limitation, biotic interactions and environmental filters interact to drive plant and fungal community assembly, but their combined effects are rarely investigated. •This study examines how different heathland plant and fungal colonization scenarios realized via three biotic treatments ‐ addition of mature heathland derived sod, addition of hay and no additions ‐ affect soil fungal community development over six years along a manipulated pH gradient in a large‐scale experiment starting from an agricultural, topsoil removed state. •Our results show that both biotic and abiotic (pH) treatments had a persistent influence on the development of fungal communities, but that sod additions diminished the effect of abiotic treatments through time. Analysis of correlation networks between soil fungi and plants suggests that the reduced effect of pH in the sod treatment, where both soil and plant propagules were added, might be due to plant‐fungal interactions since the sod additions caused stronger, more specific, and more consistent connections compared to no addition treatment. •Based on these results, we suggest that the initial availability of heathland fungal and plant taxa, that reinforce each other, can significantly steer further fungal community development to an alternative configuration, overriding otherwise prominent effect of abiotic (pH) conditions.
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    Soil fauna development during heathland restoration from arable land: role of soil modification and material transplant
    (Elsevier, 2022-01-03) Benetková, Petra; van Diggelen, Rudy; Háněl, Ladislav; Vicentini, Fabio; Moradi, Rojyar; Weijters, Maaike; Bobbink, Roland; Harris, Jim A.; Frouz, Jan
    Heathlands are threatened habitats throughout the whole Europe, which have initiated numerous restoration programmes aimed mostly at plant community reconstruction; however, little is known about soil fauna restoration. Here we have studied newly established wet and dry heathlands in the Netherlands after topsoil removal of previously agricultural land, where we manipulated the soil pH (acidification by Sulphur or liming by Ca ions as Dolokal) and introduced plant or soil material to speed up the restoration process. We sampled experimental plots and nearby mature heathlands (used as local reference habitat) over five years (2013–2017) for nematodes, mesofauna (mainly springtails and mites) and macrofauna. Although soil inoculation proved to be a substantive step in target plant community development and also helped to shift soil faunal assemblages towards the target, the latter were still far from reference heathland after five years. Only macrofaunal densities showed similar densities in 2017 as in local reference spots. The succession dynamics of all studied groups and trophic composition of macrofauna and nematodes differed in wet and dry heathlands. Soil amendments improved the initial colonisation as well as liming at the wet sites, which probably created suitable microhabitats for soil fauna development.