Fig. 4.

Schematic diagram showing the potential mechanisms by which soil and plants are related to microbial communities and ecosystem processes. The grey boxes and arrows depict the links in Grigulis et al. (2013) and the dashed box represents the links modelled in the present study. The size of the dashed black arrows is proportional to the relative contribution of soil abiotic properties, and above- and below-ground plant traits on variance of microbial functional variables. The dashed grey arrows extrapolate the potential changes that the present study could bring to the contribution of plant and microbial communities on ecosystem processes described by Grigulis et al. (2013).