Fig. 3. The influence of fungal hyphae on the dispersal of bacteria in the field.

a Example of a diamond-shaped widening along the channels which served as the basic entity to calculate bacterial abundance depending on the presence of a hypha. Scale bar = 10 µm. b Abundance of bacteria in diamond-shaped openings depending on presence of a fungal hypha, n = 4 channel pairs × 33 openings in a paired ANOVA, boxplot with median, quartiles and outliers. c Contingency diagram showing the occurrence of air or water in diamond-shaped openings depending on the presence of a fungal hypha. The frequency of channels containing hyphae is shown along the x-axis the, the frequency of channels containing liquid or water is shown along the y-axis, 264 observations in total. d Example of fungal highways developed within the soil chip’s pillar system, where hyphae drag water films with them, allowing bacterial transgression. Scale bar = 50 µm. e, f Bacterial abundance along a fungal hypha protruding into an initially air-filled channel. Bacteria were quantified per diamond-widening, each dot represents a diamond. Red dots represent diamonds that remained air-filled after 2 months in the soil, blue dots represent soil-solution filled diamonds at examination. The line beneath the data curve represents the extent of the hypha in the chip. Data derives from chips of Expt. 1 that were buried in soil and initially air-filled.