Fig. 2.

General patterns of microbial beta-diversity in superficial and deep soils during reforestation of the ex-arable land. NMDS showed the structure of microbial community for soil bacteria (a), archaea (b), and fungi (c). 95% confidence ellipses were shown around the samples grouped based on reforestation of the ex-arable land. Similarity values among the samples during reforestation of the ex-arable land (“restoration”) and between superficial and deep layers (“layer”) were examined via the ANOSIM test, which are shown in each plot. (d) Differences in beta-diversity among the bacteria, archaea, and fungi were estimated based on a Bray–Curtis distance matrix of all 300 soil samples, including 44,850 data points for each microbial group. Data that do not share a letter are significantly different between treatments (P < 0.05; multiple comparison with Kruskal-Wallis tests)