While we know that plants exert a certain control on soil microbial communities via their secondary metabolites, especially in the rhizosphere, we know little about how plant biodiversity affects soil microorganisms as a whole. Soil microorganisms are fundamentally linked to the cycling of soil Carbon, and other nutrients relevant for ecosystem functioning.

Hence,  understanding the role biodiversity plays in potentially altering microbiome functonality and resilience is of special importance, especially in lue of environmental disturbances (i.e. drought, biodiversity loss), which are likely to become more apparent in the face of climate change.

To investigate this question, we used microbial data from The Jena Experiment, a biodiversity exploratory located in Jena, Germany, to investigate how plant species richness and functional group richness, both integral parts of plant diversity, affect soil microbial communities, their network interactions, and functional capacities.