Domestication and intensive management practices have significantly shaped characteristics of modern crops. However, our understanding of domestication’s impact had mainly focused on aboveground plant traits, neglecting root and rhizospheric traits, as well as trait-trait interactions and root-microbial interactions. To address this knowledge gap, we grew modern ( Hordeum vulgare L. var. Barke) and wild barley ( H. spontaneum K. Koch var. spontaneum) in large rhizoboxes. We manipulated soil microbiome by comparing disturbed (sterilized soil inoculum, DSM) versus non-disturbed (non-sterilized inoculum, NSM) microbiome Results showed that modern barley grew faster and increased organic-carbon exudation (OC EXU) compared to wild barley. Interestingly, both barley species exhibited accelerated root growth and enhanced OC EXU under DSM, indicating their ability to partially compensate and exploit the soil resources independently of microbes if need be. Plant trait network analysis revealed that modern barley had a denser, larger, and less modular network than wild barley indicating domestication’s impact on trait coordination. Further, soil microbiome influenced specific network parameters. While the relative abundance of bacteria didn’t vary between wild and modern barley rhizospheres, species-specific core bacteria were identified, with stronger effects under DSM. Overall, our findings highlight domestication-driven shifts in root traits, trait coordination, and their modulation by the soil microbiome.

Understanding whether land use intensification causes regime shifts is of key importance for management, particularly if these shifts are associated with thresholds separating different ecosystem states and with hysteretic dynamics. Here we use a unique, long-term grassland database to identify thresholds in the response of 16 ecosystem functions and the diversities of 21 taxa to land use intensity. We show that aboveground diversity (5 of 10 taxa), shoot biomass and soil N retention showed threshold responses to land use intensity, i.e., abrupt changes between extensively and intensively managed grasslands. Time-series analysis revealed that ecosystem functions showed hysteresis around the threshold, while diversity did not. Shifting back to the functioning seen in extensively managed grasslands may therefore require larger reductions in land use intensity than shifting to the high intensity state. Identifying such thresholds along land use gradients is critical to prevent ecosystem degradation and conserve biodiversity and ecosystem functions.

Tree canopies provide habitats for diverse and until now, still poorly characterised communities of microbial eukaryotes. One of the most general patterns in community ecology is the increase in species richness with increasing habitat diversity. Thus, environmental heterogeneity of tree canopies should be an important factor governing community structure and diversity in this subsystem of forest ecosystems. Nevertheless, it is unknown if similar patterns are reflected at the microbial scale within unicellular eukaryotes (protists). In this study, high-throughput sequencing of two prominent protistan taxa, Cercozoa and Oomycota, was performed. For a comprehensive assessment of their diversity across all ecological compartments from forest soils to the canopy, group specific primers were used. When taking OTU abundances into account, our results showed highly dissimilar protistan communities within the investigated microhabitats. We observed no pattern of nestedness, because the majority of OTUs was present in all sampled microhabitats. According to the microbiological tenet ‘Everything is everywhere, but, the environment selects’, habitat diversity strongly favoured distinct protistan taxa in terms of abundance, but due to their almost ubiquitous distribution the effect of species richness on community composition was negligible.