Figure 3.

Soil microbial life‐history traits during grassland restoration. Box plots show the comparisons of life‐history trait values during grassland restoration. The medians in these box plots are as follows: average 16S rRNA genes (A), codon usage bias (B), average genome size (C), and GC content (D). The lower and upper boundaries of the box represent the first and third quartiles, respectively; the horizontal line represents the mean; the bounds of the lower and upper bars reflect the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. Different lowercase letters indicate a significant difference (p < 0.05) among the treatments (year since restoration) by Fisher's test following the analysis of variance. Relative abundance of soil microbial functional genes (E, C degradation genes; F, C fixation genes) during grassland restoration. The genes are arranged by the biodegradability of their target substrates, from labile to recalcitrant. GC, guanine–cytosine.