Figure 6.

Composition of the fungal communities. Bare soils (n = 86) and cushion soils (n = 90) were compared. (a) Phylum abundances: Error bars show SE; letters differ when means are significantly different (p < 0.05). (b) Fungal family abundances. Ascomycota are in the red‐to‐yellow color range, Mucoromycota appear in blue, and Basidiomycota are in the green range. Families representing <1% of the total reads were pooled. MOTUs without assignment at the family level were pooled by phylum (“uf” prefix); “NAs” indicate MOTUs of unknown phylum. Families whose frequencies vary from bare soils to cushion soils bear a suffix (“_^”, increase; “_v”, decrease); the significance of the difference is indicated on sectors (“.”; “*”; “**”; “***” for p < 0.1, 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, respectively)