Counteracting effects of soil biota on emergence and growth of herbaceous plants

Background Plants condition the biotic composition of their rhizosphere. In turn, this plant legacy on the soil biota may affect the performance of plants recruiting in their vicinity. Unravelling how plant-soil legacies drive plant recruitment is key to understand vegetation dynamics and plant community assembly. Studies on the topic usually focus on the effects of soil microbiota as a whole, while the relative role of different guilds of soil organisms in the plant recruitment processes is not usually dissected. Aims Here, we used soils of Mediterranean woody plant species to test whether arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and small-size microbiota (